


A Summer for Saya

by Watchword



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Comics), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Mirage Volume 1, No Smut, Podfic Welcome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-07 02:11:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 106,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12831111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Watchword/pseuds/Watchword
Summary: Dad and I have been running from my mother as long as I can remember. It's a journey that has taken us across the continental United States and through more hardship than I can shake a stick at. "It's for the best," he says. For a long time, his word was enough. But now that I'm older... I've started wondering if what he's saying is true. I've started wondering if you can be used by the people who say that they love you. And for once, I'm starting to ask what is important to me.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on Mirage Vol1 mostly  
> There is no smut in this so if you're looking for that sorry friendo
> 
>   
> Cover Art by [h0w-d0-y0u-d0-fell0w-kids](https://h0w-d0-y0u-d0-fell0w-kids.tumblr.com) and used by permission

The first time I asked about Mom, Dad sat us down beneath a shade tree and pulled a three-ring binder out of our backpack. There was a set of pictures in protective plastic sleeves, most of them very formal, some of them snipped out of newspapers. Only one seemed to be an honest shot: a Japanese woman with naked shoulders, her hair sleeked into a tight bun. She was looking at the photographer out of the corner of her eye, and there was the barest hint of a smile in the corner of her mouth. Every angle of her bust was a hard one, from the knife-like sweep of her jaws to the jag of her collarbone. To be honest, I was a little afraid of her.

“When can we meet her?” I asked.

Dad told me why we couldn’t, and we got up and walked down the road like I had never asked. I took longer strides than usual, and felt relieved when we saw the next town breaking over the horizon.

**

I can pass for human, so I'm the one Dad sends shopping. I learned how to count and read at a very young age. I don't even remember learning how to do this. But Dad says it's that way with our kind, whatever our kind is. We grow fast, we learn fast. I didn't grow as quickly as he did when he was small, he says, but that's probably the human in me.

We're always on the move. Dad mixes it up. Six months in the wild, learning how to move silently through underbrush so thick that a snake can't pass through it. Six months in the city, learning about what a person's stride looks like when they're packing heat and how to disarm them. He showed me how to throw a punch so hard it could rupture a man's spleen and taught me how to snap a wrist when I was six. In the beginning, I didn't ask why he would teach me these things: endless katas, how to handle weapons, how to scrounge for food in the least likely places, how to slip into a shadow and pad soundlessly through the dark. It was something that I did because he told me to, and later, because it was the only thing I knew.

There are certain ways that you think when you’re always moving. The first is that everything is temporary; the second is that you don’t hold on to anything you can’t carry; the third is that comfort and stasis are hard-won luxuries. Once Dad had that luxury. He had a single photograph for proof: four brothers cross-legged on the floor with beers, knee-to-knee. Someone must have told a joke, because they were bent double, slapping at the floor, slapping at each other. I had stared at it so much that I had memorized all of the scratches in the floor, the scars in the shells, and the layout of the room.

The family was still out there, he said, but it was best not to look for them. She was waiting, and her eyes were everywhere. She'd know if we so much as called them on the phone. We'd only put them in danger, and they'd suffered enough already.

**

The day it all changed was back in mid-April. We were passing through the flat country in Texas, these endless dreary furrowed hillocks. In the springs and summers, the wind kicks up and the topsoil lifts off. On bad days, you can't even see the disc of the sun, only a hazy halo. Dust goes everywhere: up your nose, up your ears. It scours your skin and you grind it between your teeth.

We were walking ahead of one of these bitter sandstorms in the tense yellow daylight. Every now and then a farmer would rumble to a stop and give us a ride in his pickup. Usually I got to ride in the front seat where the AC was, but I didn't like this terribly much. There was usually a cross dangling off of the rearview mirror and old Bibles stuffed under the seats. You could feel the Old Testament God crackling in the upholstery. The farmers would get to staring at my face. Then they'd ask in friendly voices about me, my dad, my family, what we did. I always told them we were traveling across the country to see our friends in California, and that I was fine. If they were really forward, and Dad had opted to sit in the back of the pickup like he usually did, they'd ask what happened to my face and if I were okay and did I really know that man sitting back there? That bulky man in the heavy coat and the ski mask and the gloves, even in the extreme heat of summer, with the backpack between his knees.

Yes, I said. I always said yes, and I could have said "no" anytime I wanted, and then there would have been a call on the phone. A police car could have taken me far away. Dad would have been okay—he could have lived through a nuclear apocalypse. But I was sort of afraid of phones, ever since Dad had told me that Mom could tap them. I didn't understand at the time that she would only tap specific ones. I thought she had the entire system tapped. I went so far as to think she could hear me if I spoke out loud. When I was very little, I had invented entire rituals where I would only speak at certain times of day, and never at night, or only inside of buildings or car cabs or narrow alleys, where the closed spaces swallowed sounds.

But like I said, things changed anyway, and it wasn't because I spoke. We had just found a rest stop and were sitting in the shade. Dad had dared to unbutton the faded front of his jacket and his plastron was showing, gouged and chipped from countless battles. It had to be over a hundred degrees, and he was way too hot; he shouldn't have been wearing so much. In the distance, we saw a black car coming, shimmering in the heat. He didn't even bother to look up; he was drinking bottled water and pouring it on the back of his neck. We could afford to do this since there was a water fountain.

"Come on," he said. "Let's go behind the trees."

What he really meant was, "I need to take this jacket off or I'm going to die." So we went to sit in the shade beneath this huge old cottonwood, and he put me on watch while he aired out. I watched that black car grow closer and closer and closer. A dust storm was right on its tail. For some reason I felt it was important. Perhaps Dad did, too. Maybe he was done running. I don't know. But when the car slowed down, the hairs on my neck started prickling.

"Dad," I said, "I think they're stopping."

He slipped his coat on again and buttoned it up while the car creaked to a stop. It had Florida license plates, the double oranges coated with red dust. The driver-side window opened and a white man in sunglasses and a dark t-shirt leaned out, arm over his face. A violent gust of sand rattled the signs.

"Hey there, honey," he shouted. "You look lonesome. What are you doing here all alone?"

"Waiting," I said. "Thanks."

"Waiting for who?"

"She's with me," Dad said, stepping around the tree. "Come on, Saya. Let's go."

"Saya," said the driver. "That's a nice name. Japanese?"

Dad grunted. "Yeah."

"Is that a winter coat?" said the driver. "In this heat?"

Every other time someone had asked about Dad's coat, they'd sounded a little worried, like Dad was crazy or a criminal or something. But the driver sounded jubilant and he was grinning like we were all the best of friends. We could barely see the man in the passenger seat, but there was a flash of movement as he grabbed for the phone in his back pocket.

Dad grew very quiet. He looked up. He was holding our backpack loosely in one hand. The wrapped hilts jutted out near his open palm. I knew what he was thinking because he'd given every part of his brain to me, every part but the one with Mom in it. What he was thinking was that the land was too open and exposed, so there was only one way out, and that was to get to the men in the car and make sure they never talked.

"Yes," Dad said. "The sun is... not good for me."

I took the cue and eased toward the car, head low, like a shy child might.

"But it's okay for your daughter?" said the driver. He looked at me and grinned. "What's wrong, kiddo?"

I flashed up to the door. The passenger shouted, but before he could get a word out I had slung my fist. The first throwing knife went through the passenger's eye and the second through the driver's throat. He flung his arms up spastically, knocking me away, and pounded a foot against the gas pedal. The tires spun uselessly on the gravel for a precious second before it took off, just long enough for two shuriken to whistle through the window. There were two wet thunks, and the car whipped wildly to the right, so fast that it skidded and nearly rolled. Dad was closer than I had realized: he leaped onto the car, swung the door open, yanked the driver out, then rolled in. The brake lights flared on, but not before the car had clipped one of the cheap metal awnings shading the picnic tables. A scream of tortured metal and the awning crashed into the hood.

By this time I was on top of the driver. He was still alive, groping at his throat. I cut it for him and twisted his arms back while he bled out. No easy task. I told you, I was small. I’ve always been small. I had to keep his arms pinned with all of my strength, and even then he rolled on top of me and fought as he choked on his own blood. As for the passenger, he was thrust out of the car, and Dad was on him. There was a squawk and a choking sound, and then Dad rushed over to help me, and before we knew it, everything was over.

Dad picked through the passenger's pockets: a handgun, a handful of business cards for a private investigator, a wallet. Then he gingerly raised the phone. Even from that distance, I could see that a number had been dialed.

Dad raised the phone to his ear. A man’s voice rang out from the speaker, loud and clear.

"Hey! Are you there? You all right?"

Dad hesitated. "Yes."

"Who is this?" A pause. "Leonardo?"

Dad hung up, then began picking through the phone, eyes darting over the screen. He was splattered liberally with blood. So was I. For the first time in a long time, I felt a pang of terror. We couldn't talk to people in clothes like this, and this was all we had. Where was Dad going to find a big enough winter coat to cover himself in the middle of a blazing southern summer?

But there wasn't time for panic. I frisked the driver: loaded handgun, badge, wallet containing a driver’s license and concealed carry permit, phone. The pistol was loaded, safety on; its grip was smooth and untarnished. I piled the contents of his pockets in the car to protect them from the gusting wind. Then I grabbed him beneath the arms and dragged him behind the picnic area, cursing my decision to cut his throat, and dropped him off the ditch. It hadn't rained in a while so the grass wasn't very high at all. Anyone who turned around for a scenic view of the cotton field would see the body just lying there. The stream of blood was like an arrow pointing to the scene.

I had gone back for the passenger and grabbed him beneath the arms when the phone rang. Dad hesitated again. Then, looking at me, he accepted the call.

A string of Japanese rolled out in a husky woman's voice. Chills ran down my spine. Dad's eyes narrowed.

"No," he said. "She wasn't harmed. She's right here." He looked me in the face. "She doesn't want to talk to you."

I should've been dragging the passenger away, but I couldn't stop looking at the phone. Furious and incomprehensible words rattled through the speaker.

"It's a little too late for threats," Dad said.

Then, clearly, I heard her voice in English: "Child, whatever he has told you..."

Dad hung up and arched his arm as though to fling the phone far out in the field. Then he hesitated, very slowly, breathing out through his nose, and slipped it into his pocket. It began ringing immediately.

"Go on," he said. "Drag him back. Don't worry about covering it up. We need to get out of here."

So I dumped the passenger's body on top of his friend's and ran to join Dad in the car. The tank was nearly full, we had two wallets brimming with cash, and there was a GPS plugged into the lighter. We threw the AC on full blast, and Dad took off down the road, going ninety.

**

He went north as soon as he could. Grain silos loomed like monuments against the endless horizon. I spent the downtime going through the layer of trash in the back seat, separating Styrofoam cups and candy wrappers from digital recorders and documents. We had just passed through Amarillo when Dad began talking, the longest stream of sentences I could remember in weeks.

"You did well back there," he said.

"Thanks." I shifted uncomfortably. "We don't have to go back to the wild, do we?"

"We do. Our position was compromised."

I groaned and collapsed into my seat. Everyone who romanticizes living in nature is an idiot. All the game starts tasting the same, there's no seasoning except what you harvest yourself, and if you can't find food, tough cookies—you go without. You're always too cold or too hot or too wet. God, and the fleas and the ticks and the mosquitoes! Getting whipped by branches and sleeping on dirt and stepping into poison sumac. Once we were stalked by a mountain lion, for god's sake. And I don't care how much you pad the ground with leaves, you wake up with a crick in your neck and an aching back. I’d read comic books where kids were wishing for MP3 players and computers, but I would have killed for a mattress.

"It's for our safety," he said.

"I don't want to."

"Do you want her to find us?" he asked.

"Yes," I snapped.

"You do not. You know what she'd do to you."

"But I hate running all of the time," I said. "I want to stay somewhere for longer than two weeks."

"You know we can't do that."

"Why not?" I asked. "What if we stayed in California this time? What if we went to Mexico? You told me we could go to Mexico if things got really bad. If we just hid out for a long time, and nobody saw us, that's just as good as always running, right?"

"That brings its own dangers," he said. "I won't feel comfortable until you're large enough to take care of yourself."

"But I am big enough to take care of myself."

He glanced at me with a little smile. It was a proud one. "It's true. You do an excellent job."

I couldn't help it. I began to smile a little, too.

"But you are still small," he said.

My smile collapsed. "Dad."

"You'll get there. Don't worry. It's not an insult."

"Then... when can we stop running?"

"I think we'll know when the time is right."

"But why not now?"

"That's a foolish question, Saya."

"If she calls again," I said, "can I talk to her this time?"

Suddenly the air went out of the cab. His face grew solemn, his eyes fretful. I hated that look.

"I shouldn't have taken the call," he said flatly.

I prickled with irritation. _Own what you do_ , he always said. _If you can’t bear the outcome of an action, don’t act._

"Why not?" I asked. "You could find out clues about how much they know."

He grunted. "It was a mistake. She knows exactly where we are now."

"She sounded angry," I said.

"She's always angry."

"Then why did you ever like her?" I asked.

"We had many similar interests... similar backgrounds."

"That's it?" I asked. "A human wanted to touch you because of similar interests?"

He squinted at me out of the corner of his eye and said nothing.

"Sorry," I said.

Silence. I groaned and kicked the dash. If I didn't say something, I knew the opportunity would go, and god knew when it would return.

"Come on, Dad. Tell me."

“It's a long story,” he said. "And it isn't interesting."

"It is, too!"

His eyes never left the road. “I was the in-between for our clan. Your mother and I became well acquainted over time. Discussions over tea, the merits of weapons, some sparring, an outsider's perspective on the Foot's disputes... we took the tasks the Foot didn’t want their fingerprints on.”

"I thought you said you weren't criminals."

"We weren't. But criminal activities sometimes coincide with vigilante justice." He shrugged. "We needed money sometimes, and we couldn’t earn it like normal people. The Foot provided a… comfortable gray area. Criminal elements will always exist, and some are better than others.”

I thought I saw the corner of his mouth twitch.

"And that was it?"

"On and off for about three years. Hand me a water."

I thrust a bottle into his hand. “How did you meet?”

“She had me tased.”

“Shouldn’t that have been a bad sign?”

"Of course it was," he said, and tipped the bottle back. "I lost all of my common sense. Your mother and I had sprung from... competing organizations. Hers in particular dealt with deception. In the end, it's what you're loyal to that wins out."

"What were you loyal to?" I asked.

One of the detectives' phones started ringing before he could answer. When I checked it, I saw that it was from someone labeled "The Missus." There was a picture of a black woman with a white smile, a toddler clasped up against her chest. Dad saw it briefly, then looked back to the road.

"Let it ring," he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I started looking up names for this little asshole and I found this one for a girl that was "Swift Arrow"
> 
> "Haha great"
> 
> 50,000 words later I actually think to look up corresponding kanji to make sure the name makes sense
> 
> There is absolutely no way that you can combine kanji in "Saya" to make "Swift Arrow." The best I could come up with was "Sand Arrow."
> 
> So yeah the adventures of Sand Arrow everybody


	2. Chapter 2

We stopped for gas somewhere in the Oklahoma panhandle at a dinky Mom and Pop convenience store. It was about three in the morning. The only sounds we could hear was the hum of electricity and the moths beating themselves senseless against the lights.

I did the purchasing like always. I covered myself with a blanket that I had found in the backseat, and later cleaned up as best as I could in the bathroom. Dad didn't want to use the credit cards because the purchase history could be tracked, but there was lots of cash in the wallets, so we used that. I bought an overpriced Oklahoma sweatshirt and looked for men's coats while I was in there. Yeah, yeah, I know it was summer, but little stores in little towns have strange stock. You know, like a flock of resin sheep sitting on a shelf over a bundle of garden hoses. A coat might actually make sense.

There was no coat. There were some shitty resin cattle with googly eyes, though.

I was walking back out to the car with my third round of supplies—two cases of Gatorade and a bag full of instant Campbell’s soup—when a motorcycle purred up beside the curb. My reflection stared blankly at me from the motorcyclist’s visor: the strange flat nose, the patchy skin, the broad jaws and underdeveloped chin, the thin black hair tied back into a knot. I pass for human, all right, as long as I claim to have some kind of disorder.

The rider tipped his visor up and I stopped cold. I was looking right into a pair of eyes exactly like my father's. The body shape—small and bulky and compact—just like my father's. And the three-fingered hands…

When he spoke, I recognized his voice from the phone call earlier that afternoon.

"Hey there, kid," said the rider. "I thought I'd find you here."

I glanced past the rider to the car. Dad was already staring, and there was a horrible look on his face—the look he reserved for sadists and junkyard dogs.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Raphael, your uncle," said the rider. "I'll bet Leo told you lots of shit about me. I won’t lie; most of it’s true."

I felt warily interested. I liked Raphael. Just the idea of him, I mean. All I know are censored stories, but I think Raphael was the only person who could tell Dad to go to hell and then follow through with the threat.

Dad stepped out, wrapping a scarf around his face.

"Uh-oh," Raphael said, but he didn't sound too concerned. "Here comes the boss. Whew, look at all the blood. Shouldn'ta killed those two back there; the police are going crazy."

I felt cold. "You're with them."

"Not quite." Raphael saluted Dad with a lazy flourish. "Evening."

"How did you find us?" Dad asked.

"Some douchebag in a podunk town recorded you two and posted it online with snarky commentary," Raphael said. "You gotta admit, nobody wears clothes quite like we do. Like stuffing a pumpkin in a tube sock. Anyway, it was easy to catch up after that."

"So you're on her payroll?" Dad asked. His voice was quiet.

"Sure," Raphael said. "Not everyone can live a quiet life in the country like you."

I didn’t dare look at Dad. “So you’re here to take me back to New York."

Raphael turned to me, eyes crinkling. "You bet. The city that never sleeps. Back to Karai and the Foot Clan."

"I can't allow you to do that." Dad's hand fell on Raph's shoulder.

"Leo, you selfish prick," Raph said, shrugging him off. "Maybe you can abandon the whole family like they're nothing, but not me. I do this, I get Karai off of all our backs.”

“Selfish?” Dad’s eyes blazed. “Saya _is_ my family, Raphael. For that matter, she’s yours. If Karai got her hands on her…”

“She’d what, give her a good education? Keep her in a penthouse apartment, eating cake all day long? Goddamn, you look at your kid and tell me what kinda good you’ve done for her. Can she even read?”

“Yes,” I snapped.

“She can do everything that she needs to do,” Dad said. There was pride in his voice, and I won’t lie: I basked in it. “She’s a capable survivor and fighter.”

“She looks like she was hit by a car,” Raphael said.

I didn’t like Raphael.

Dad’s tone dropped. “I suggest you keep your beauty tips to yourself.”

“Can we go?” I asked, and stepped around the back of the motorcycle. Suddenly Raph’s hand clamped around my shoulder.

“Nope, not unless it’s with me,” he said. “Sorry, kid. I’ve got a debt to pay.”

“Not my problem,” I said, and yanked back. His grip only tightened. I glanced at Dad. _Should I get my knife?_

He shook his head. “Raphael, please. Drop her.”

“Or you’ll what?” Raphael raked Dad with his eyes. “You look pretty bad yourself, buddy. What’ve you been living off, cat food?”

Dad took a deep breath. “Raph. If we’re going to have any kind of useful conversation, you’ve got to calm down.”

“Calm down? Calm _down_?” Raphael’s fingers sank into my shoulder and I buckled, gaping in pain. “Do you know what happened to Casey and April, Leo? They lost the apartment complex because of you. They can't settle down for three seconds before the Foot's on them, and naturally, Mike and Shadow are along for the whole shitty ride. You shoulda known Karai would take this personally. You shoulda known she wouldn't just come after you. She won't give up until the day she dies.”

"And hand-deliver Saya to the Bunker?" Dad said. "I know what they do down there, Raph."

"Yeah, so do I, but if you think Karai is gonna let them do that to her kid, you're nuts."

"It's nuts that she'd make Saya in the first place."

“I’m still here,” I hissed through my teeth.

"Who cares? It's what she wanted to do with her time and money and whatever-the-hell else," said Raphael. "Not our problem. You should've left the kid where you found her."

"Left her?" Dad's eyes blazed up. "They vivisect things down there, Raph. They keep intelligent creatures in isolation until they crack. They have no regard for life at all. Saya is my responsibility, and I'm not going to let them hurt her."

“Numbers, bro, numbers. One miserable person or seven?” Raph leaned back in his seat and released me; I backed away, rubbing at my arm. "Besides, if she were just an experiment, do you really think they'd go to this much trouble to get her back?"

“Even if their intentions were respectable, I don't want Saya involved with organized crime."

"Come _on_! Both of you are covered in the blood of dead men and you want to start arguing _morality_ with me? Don and Mike got it right: get out or turn into the monster. The thing Master Splinter taught us wasn't about love and peace, that's all I gotta say.” Raphael laughed. It wasn’t a cheerful sound. “Admit it, Leo: this is about control. You hate it when you can’t be the one calling the shots."

Dad ground his teeth. “Do you have a point, Raphael, or are you just here to insult me?”

Raphael lifted his helmet, exposing his inhuman face just as plain as day, and gave Dad the biggest stink-eye I'd ever seen.

"Are you stupid on purpose?" he said.

"There's people here!" I hissed.

“I’m done with this conversation,” Dad said. “We are gaining absolutely nothing by it. Saya, get in the car.”

"People are looking!" I said, backing away. "People can see your face!"

"Let 'em see it." Raphael sneered at the gaping cashier, who skittered away from the door and disappeared behind the counter. “So. Saya. Honest question. Do you like living on the run?”

Dad’s eyes met mine. I knew what he was thinking. But when I looked back at Raphael, the truth came out anyway.

“No,” I whispered.

Dad flinched as though I had cut him. Raphael grinned, relaxing back into his seat.

“Here’s how I see it, Saya. If you’re as mature as Leo says you are, you get to make choices of your own. You’re smart, right? You’re a good little fighter? That’s one thing Leo does right—training, I mean. Perhaps the only thing. He’s kind of a one-trick pony.”

“Better than an undisciplined goon,” Dad said.

“Oh, Leo, you wound me, you do,” Raphael said. “Now, kid, if you want, you can jump on this motorcycle with me and I’ll take you straight to your mother. You’ll help a lot of good people if you do this, even your worthless father. Nobody else’ll have to suffer, and Karai will call off her hounds. I guess if you don’t like the Foot you can just leave anytime you want, long as you don’t make Karai think that any of us are behind your disappearance… you get me? Because then I’d have to come after you again and believe me, you don’t want that.”

I knotted my hands into fists.

“Are you threatening her?” Dad asked quietly.

“You know what?” Raphael asked, rocking back on his motorcycle and thrusting out the kickstand. “I’ve just about had it with you.”

He swaggered to his feet, ripping off his leather jacket and gloves and throwing them on the seat beside his helmet. I immediately knew we were in trouble. I’d always thought of Dad as thickset, but he had nothing on Raphael. Raphael was as broad-shouldered as an ox, and just one of his arms was as wide around as my waist. He was pocked by scars; his shell was so battered that it looked like he’d weathered a meteor strike. The stained hilts of his sai jutted out of his belt, but he didn’t grab for them. He curled his hands into fists and cracked his knuckles. They were taped up like a boxer’s.

Dad took a few steps away, settling into a shallow back stance, statue-still. His eyes flicked to mine. They were tired, really tired. He’d been walking all month in the hot sun. He hadn’t eaten a decent meal in two weeks and was as lean as a stray dog.

So maybe it’s crazy, but I nodded to Dad. Almost immediately, the weariness on his face faded away and was replaced by that emotionless expression he always wore in a fight, his blank space, the place where he went when it was a matter of life or death. He shrugged off the old blood-stained coat and threw it behind him, then loosened the ill-fitting pants and kicked them aside. Right there where there were cameras, where passing cars could see us, where any random passersby could gawk. Thank god it was so late.

“This,” said Raphael, shaking out his fists, “this is for Casey, you ungrateful bastard.” And then he plunged toward him.

Dad stepped aside and Raphael’s first strike hissed over his shoulder. I fully expected Dad to punch in that split second where Raph had overextended, but he didn’t. He stepped back and offered Raphael an opening to his throat.

Raph laughed and took a step back. “You think I’m gonna fall for that?” he asked, and charged.

Dad spun around him, beautifully swift. Not swift enough. There was a brutal pop, and then Dad was bent over his knees, hand over his mouth. Blood dribbled between his fingers. Raph stood over him and laughed.

“You’ve slowed down, bro,” he said, shoving him back toward the street. “Too bad, too bad.”

Dad nodded, spat, and rose back into fighting form. His cheek was already swelling up.

Panic panged in my stomach. No street punk we had ever fought had actually hit Dad. Shot him? Yes. But hit him, in hand-to-hand combat? Even when we had faced packs of assailants, he had come through without so much as a scratch.

As quietly as I could, I set our purchases on the pavement and padded behind them, just out of Raphael’s sight. I didn’t jump in at once. Raphael was three times my size and could have laid me flat with one hit. God, he was vicious. Swift jagged strikes at the face and kidneys, low kicks aimed at the knees and ankles. Dad never went on the offensive, but he couldn’t dodge everything: he would slip up, he would hesitate one moment too long, the weariness would flicker over his face. Then there would be a flurry of strikes, violent impacts. Dad would tear away in terrible shape—once with a blackening arm, another time dodging a broken ankle by mere inches, and at one point bowled over into the street. I held my breath.

Raphael laughed and laughed. “Goddamn, Leo,” he said. “Are you even going to try?”

Panting, Dad dropped his arms just enough to bare his throat. It was a split-second movement, not the blatant feint from the beginning of the fight. I held my breath.

Laughing, Raph plunged for the opening. Just as quickly it was gone and the punch whiffed harmlessly through the air. Dad stumbled away—his knee was oddly twisted one moment, his stance off-balance the next. Gloating, Raph struck for each easy target, and just as quickly missed. It almost looked like a dance. Dad darted under Raph’s blows, dodged his kicks and punches, and backed away or turned circles around him. At one point he jumped aside just for Raphael to clip one of the gas pumps, gashing his knuckle all the way to his wrist.

Raph hissed. “Shit!”

“Who have you been practicing with?” Dad asked, bent over his knees. “ _Have_ you been practicing?”

“Fuck you!” Raphael huffed, shaking his hand. Dark blood gushed out, spattering on the pavement. His wavering eye lit on me.

I was only a couple of yards away, hands in my pockets.

I froze. But without hesitating he sized me up, looked down at me over the curve of his snout, and turned his back. Resentment rushed up in my chest. I thrust my hands into my pockets for the throwing knives, but when I looked up it was to see Dad quietly shaking his head.

Raph’s eyes flashed. “You got something to say?” he said, and struck.

He had expected Dad to dodge again. He was wrong. Dad darted underneath his punch and seized his outstretched arm. Raph saw it coming and twisted, but he wasn’t fast enough: one expert thrust of Dad’s hand and Raph’s elbow snapped like dry spaghetti. Screaming with rage, Raphael smashed his good fist into the back of Dad’s skull, dropping him to the asphalt.

A fountain of profanity pouring between his teeth, Raph ripped a sai out of his belt. The sharpened points glinted in the artificial light.

Dazed, Dad zigzagged to his feet. He had barely turned around when Raphael crashed into him from the side. At the same time, I sprang: lunged across the distance between us, drew my knife, and thrust it into the back of Raph’s knee with every ounce of strength I possessed. Metal crunched into bone and twanged on tendons. Left leg buckling, Raph collapsed onto his hip.

Even as Raphael went down, he rolled, slinging his broken fist at me. I dropped chest-first to the pavement, but I was not fast enough. A burst of agony, a flash behind my eyelids, and I crashed onto my cheek. As I struggled to my feet, tasting blood, Dad slung his arms around Raph’s neck and his legs around his waist, then strained back. Raph rolled and pawed uselessly, spitting, his face dark with fury. Minutes ticked by as long as hours. At first I thought that Raph’s neck was just that thick, too thick for Dad to snap. But when Raph’s eyes fluttered shut, and the wild writhing slowed, I understood.

I picked up Raphael’s sai. “Should we kill him?”

Dad, still holding Raph in a sleeper hold, shook his head.

“Why not?” I asked.

Far away, a police siren wailed.

“Get the car loaded,” Dad hissed between his teeth. “Get back into the store. Grab a case of bottled water and all the First Aid kits you can get your hands on.”

“But Dad, he’s going to come back!”

Dad’s look was so murderous that I ducked my head and ran back into the store. The clerk hid behind the counter when I pushed through the door. I considered throwing money on the counter, but then shrugged and lugged the goods out to the car. Dad had laid Raphael on the ground, flat on his face, and was picking up the ill-fitting pants and Raphael’s jacket and boots. At first I was confused as to why he was just throwing them in the back seat and not putting them on.

That’s when I saw the blood dripping down his left side.

“Oh my god! Where did he hit you?”

“Just get in the car,” Dad said, limping to the driver’s side. He pressed his old winter coat up under his arm, but it was slick polyester and the blood just rolled over it.

I threw the goods in the back seat. Dad picked up Raph’s sai and raided his bags, tossing them on the floorboards. Then he grabbed the keys to his motorcycle and threw them to me.

“Hold onto these,” he said.

We pulled out of the gas station, Dad punching the gas. I looked out the back window for the cop cars’ blinking lights, but we were long gone before the cavalry arrived. One of the detectives’ phones started ringing down on the floorboards. I toed it out from underneath a pile of maps to look at the screen. Unknown number. I glanced up at Dad. He was focused on the road, one finger on the GPS. When he drew his finger away, a spot of blood was left glistening against the screen.

“Can you wipe that off?” Dad said.

As I nosed around for a Kleenex, I saw that his hands were shaking on the wheel.


	3. Chapter 3

I didn’t take my eyes off of Dad as he drove. I didn’t dare. In the dark, I couldn’t tell how much he was bleeding or how badly he had been struck. Indolent minutes crept by. When Dad cranked up the AC again, the cold air burned on my cheek, and I remembered that I had hurt myself. I dug in the bag for the First Aid kits.

“Were you hurt?” Dad asked. He turned on the radio.

“Not bad.” I pulled out a pack of disinfectant wipes, each one a luminous white square in the darkness. “I fell, that’s all.”

He touched my shoulder. “Thank you.”

I briefly touched his arm.

“About the things he said.” Dad’s hand fell to the wheel again. “Don’t take anything personally. He was just angry at me.”

I grimaced as the alcohol burned into my cheek. “You should’ve killed him. You know he’s just going to find you again.”

“I deeply hurt him,” Dad said. “He loves Casey more than any of us, and it’s Casey and his family who have suffered most for my foolishness. If I killed him, I might as well kill myself.”

“Your foolishness, huh,” I said, looking into the mirror. A squashed, swollen monster looked back at me. “You could’ve just left your foolishness where you found it.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“You’re the one who said it, not me.”

“I wasn’t talking about you.” Dad’s jaw was set again. “I should have known that there would be repercussions for fraternizing with your mother.”

“So now I’m a repercussion?”

“Stop!” Dad slapped the dashboard, eyes flashing. I jerked back in my seat.

“Stop,” he said again, softer. “I blame you for nothing. You have done nothing wrong. You’re… all I have.”

I looked away and busily scrubbed at my face. My cheek burned like pain incarnate.

“I consider you one of the victims of my past stupidity,” he said. “And truthfully… if Karai had allowed me to have a hand in your life, I wouldn’t have done any of this.”

“But I would’ve been part of the Foot.”

“As Raphael said, ‘Numbers.’ I had to think of everyone. But when Karai insisted that our relationship was not only over, but that I was to disappear like I had never been, that you were… essentially a memento…” He frantically tapped his fingers on the wheel. “By that point, I didn’t even want your mother to love me anymore. I just wanted to be involved in your life. You were part of me, part of my family. She denied me that. So I made a decision: everyone else was an adult and could take care of themselves. You, on the other hand, were completely helpless. She was talking about taking off your shell, changing your face, sending you away to Japan…” He clenched his hands on the wheel. “She wanted you, but she didn’t want me. I started wondering what would happen to you if she couldn’t excise me completely.”

I shuddered. “I don’t want to think about that.”

“Nor do I.”

I looked down at my hands. The square of disinfectant was stained dark with blood and dirt. “You’re telling me the truth, aren’t you? The whole truth?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. There are some feelings you just can’t put into words. All I could think of was Dad picking up the phone, her voice calling out to me across twenty states, and his refusal to let me answer it.

**

I must have fallen asleep. I don’t remember when. But I do remember waking up with a snort when the car swerved. I flailed around for something to grab onto and saw a confused image of predawn fields, the silhouettes of scrub and trees, the paling moon. Dad had hit the brakes and the car idled half in the ditch. A pop song was blaring full blast out of the speakers.

“What happened?” I asked. I looked over my shoulder, fully expecting a car in pursuit or the glowing eyes of some jackass mule deer. The road was completely vacant. Then I looked at Dad. Oh, god, he looked so bad. His skin was pale and his breath was ragged and faint. His face and arm were hideously swollen.

“Are you okay?” I asked. I regretted speaking; my jaw was sore.

“Yes,” he said. “I just need a breather.”

“Should I drive?” I asked.

He laughed and shook his head. Some of the color returned to his cheeks. “No, thank you.” He tapped the gas and took off, going only twenty miles per hour or so. Even at that speed, the vehicle weaved. He took a dirt road going east, toward the faint blush of the oncoming sunrise.

“Dad, please stop. I don’t want to die like this.”

“I’m looking for a good place to hide,” he said. He was slurring. “Don’t worry.”

Eventually we hit pavement again, and wound between the endless flat fields spreading in every direction. The monotony was broken only by the intermittent farmhouse or the arced frames of the irrigation units. You could see the sparkle of car windshields from twenty miles away. We must have been in Kansas by then.

We finally pulled up to an abandoned convenience store, a faded wind-battered edifice that sat a mile out from a ghost town. Dad pulled up behind it. Almost as soon as he had put us in park, he slumped over the wheel and buried his face in his arms.

I grabbed him by the arm. He was cold.

“Hey,” I said. “Just tell me what to do.”

“First Aid,” he said. “And the sports drinks.”

As I dug in the back seat, he opened the driver’s side door and staggered out, collapsing against the wall of the store. His eyes were closed and he sucked oxygen like a landed fish.

I opened a container of Gatorade and pushed the bottle up into his mouth. “Where did he get you?”

As he took a long swig, he lifted his arm so that I could see the wounds. The leftmost point had only scored a long scrape on the bony plate running along Dad’s side, but the middle point had punctured the plate, and the third had ripped deeply through the exposed flesh of his armpit.

I whistled.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “I’m all right. Just tired. Got the kits?”

He tended himself with bottled water, alcohol, and paper towels. I helped him pluck broken pieces of shell out of the gouge, applied the disinfectant and cotton pads, and taped everything down. He told me to tap the wound, hard, and he turned a sickly chalky green every time I hit it. Then he slid down on his haunches and leaned out over his knees. I gave him a can of instant soup, and he knocked it back cold.

“You don’t look good,” I said.

“I lost a lot of blood and some peace of mind, that’s all.”

I squatted next to him and stared out over the fields. Thick brush and straggling trees hugged the fence-line, but they were hardly enough cover to mask the entire car. I decided right there and then that I was never coming back to this featureless agrarian hell ever again.

“I’m gonna break into the convenience store,” I told Dad. “Gonna look for a tarp to cover the car or something.”

He didn’t answer. He had passed out.

I dug for a crowbar in the trunk, but found nothing. Eventually I just grabbed one of Raphael’s sai. I thrust the point underneath a corner of plyboard and snapped it off. Fanning the dust away, I pressed my face up against the glass. I saw pale chinks of light stretching across empty shelving and lots of cobwebs. The floor was completely empty. Not a single item left behind, not even a receipt.

Just the thought of breaking in suddenly seemed exhausting.

I crept back to the car and swung the front door open, slumping down on the front seat. Blood had stained the door and the driver’s seat was still damp with it, but I was out cold in five minutes. I should’ve stayed up and kept watch, I guess, but I was tired, too.

The sun woke me by burning the hell out of my face. Late morning… no, noon. I sat up, licking my lips and stretching. The cab was filled with the rank stink of gore, and eager flies were tickling my legs as they ran up and down the stained upholstery. My cheek was swollen and blazing hot. I fumbled for the First Aid kit, and without thinking about it, my eyes lit on Dad. He hadn’t moved and I couldn’t tell if he were breathing or not. A fly landed on his arm, ran in a circle, and rubbed its hands together.

I could have gone to check on him, but I didn’t. I sat there for a while, just staring, twisting my fingers together, a hundred thoughts racing through my mind. I imagined racing off down the road in the car. Calling the unknown number on the cell phone. Stopping at a police station and turning myself in. The good photo of Mom. And then I thought of the farmhouse in Massachusetts and the faded photo of four brothers laughing over beers.

I looked over at Dad’s backpack, sitting in the back seat. The binder with its photos jutted out of the broken zipper. I dove into it headlong.

I threw aside our battered collection of paperbacks and opened the three-ring binder first. There was the picture of Dad and his brothers. Now I could pick out Raphael—the bulky turtle with his hand relaxed on Dad’s shoulder. Then I looked at the pictures of Mom. Some had almost faded completely away, especially the ones from newspapers. One picture I didn’t remember: a woman in an elegant black dress suit striding long-legged down a sidewalk, a gaggle of suits bunched up in her wake. The date was from last year. I didn’t remember Dad cutting it out.

I flipped to the candid shot. She stared out at me with that expression that had frightened me when I was small, but for some reason it only intrigued me now. I felt that if I knew who had taken the picture, I would know what she was thinking.

Setting the binder aside, I thrust my arms into the backpack. I found a little black book, but when I opened it for a read, everything was in ciphers. More digging revealed a bottle of oil and some wrapped rags for cleaning the katana. And then the katana themselves, knocking against my hand as I rooted around. They’re illegal weapons and produce some pretty unique deaths, so Dad almost never uses them, and they were usually wrapped up. I only saw them when he took them out for practice and their weekly cleaning.

I reached past the utilitarian pair that Dad used in a pinch and pulled out the two that he kept cocooned in black fabric. I slowly pushed the strips aside. Underneath were the lacquered wooden sheaths, black and shining. There were gold and red accents near the tip and perfect gold buttons on the hilts, and the blades were of high quality steel. Dad had told me very shortly that they were a pair made by one of the best modern sword-makers in Japan, and that Mom had given them to him long ago. They were magic.

I was just about to unbind the katana when the phone went off again.

I stuffed the swords back into the backpack, slid over to the passenger’s side, and pushed the papers off of the floor. Unknown number. Carefully, I picked it up, my eyes locked on Dad’s still form, and accepted the call.

A husky woman’s voice snapped something in Japanese.

“Hello,” I said slowly. “This is Saya.”

The voice stopped.

Then, slowly: “Where is Leonardo?”

“Sleeping,” I said.

“Ah.” A dissatisfied sound. “So you are alone.”

“Maybe. Is this… my mother?”

Silence. “Yes.”

I swallowed slowly, slid out of the passenger door, and shrank down beside the car, where the shadow would protect me from the sun somewhat. The sand was cool, moist from the morning dew. A storm of unformed ideas rushed through my head, but only one sentence came out.

“Why can’t you leave us alone?” I said.

“Leave you alone!” she said, and laughed bitterly. “You are kidnapped, and you ask me to leave you alone?”

 _I’m an idiot._ “I’m tired, all right?”I said, rubbing my temples. “I just want to sleep.”

“And you can sleep as much as you like. Just wait where you are and the men in my employ will take you to a hotel. Then you may live in a beautiful city where no comfort will be denied to you.”

_Just wait where you are._

I shivered and peered over my shoulder onto the road; nothing. I looked back into the fields. Glossy green leaves tossed in the wind, a shimmering surge that broke on the fenceline with a whisper. Sparrows tussled in the bushes. A grasshopper was staring judgmentally at me from a green stalk.

“What exactly happened between you and my father?” I asked.

There was such a long silence that I held the phone away just to see if the call had dropped. It hadn’t. I put it back to my ear.

“Are you there?” I asked.

“I am not going to answer that kind of question,” she said. “The most important thing is that you are recovered.”

“You all have a really funny way of talking about me,” I said, “like I’m something you lost on the side of the road.”

“Of course you are more important than that.” She cleared her throat. I didn’t like the sound of her voice, the way it strained to sound pleasant.

I took a deep breath. “Dad said that you were probably going to experiment on me down in the Bunker. Is that true?”

“He said what?” Each word snapped out like a whip-crack.

“You heard what I said,” I said as firmly as possible. My voice quavered anyway.

Silence. I heard a door shut, the swish of fabric, the creak of a chair.

“Come on!” I said. “I’m trying to figure out what to do with my life. I don’t like being with Dad, but I don’t know if being with you is much better. I just want to know what’s going on before I make any decisions.”

Her voice was brusque. “A long time ago, I had… a daughter. She was murdered.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Your apologies are not necessary.” She cleared her throat. “Your father helped me defeat the forces responsible. Later he helped me clear up other problems around the city. At the time, I enjoyed his company. He was an excellent ninja and had mastered a wide variety of useful skills. He showed me due deference and he stood by a strong moral code that I could respect.”

 _My god!_ “You touched a mutant because of his moral code?”

“I was cursed with insanity.”

I sagged against the car, stomach twisting. The metal was heating up in the sun. “So… why couldn’t you share?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why wouldn’t you let him be in my life? He says you wanted him to leave completely.”

“You were none of his business.”

“Am I even related to him?”

“Yes.”

“Then doesn’t that make me his business?”

“You would have never been born without the resources at my disposal,” she said. “Besides, he would have been horrified. The protection of his family was more important to him than any other consideration, even his own life. If he knew about you, he would feel stretched thin. Eventually, he would feel forced to make a decision between you and everyone else.”

I turned slowly and looked underneath the car. All I could see was Dad’s still hands. I thought of those hands around Raphael’s neck.

“Are you telling me that you knew all this and you did it anyway?” I asked.

“If we are wise, we do what solely appeals to logic.” Her voice darkened. “But we can’t always be wise.”

“Yeah.” I took a deep breath. “Can I ask what you would have done with me if Dad hadn’t…”

“I would have sent you to Japan to live with people I trusted,” she said. “You would have received the best in education and training, and I would have paid for reconstructive surgery so that you could have passed for a human being. At the age of ten, I would have brought you here to New York to train beneath me, and you would have been groomed to enter the ranks of the Foot. I never planned on revealing you to your father.”

“You would’ve lied to me.”

“For your own good.”

“I would’ve been a prisoner.” I rocked back and forth; my proto-shell tapped against the door.

She laughed. “And you are not a prisoner now?” she asked.

“No,” I snapped.

“Ah? Then I give you a challenge. Threaten to leave,” she said. “See how his hand falls on your shoulder. The words he will say: ‘Maybe later, but not now.’ When you protest, he will say, ‘You are not ready yet.’ The truth is, of course, that you will never be ready. Oh, truly, he has not shackled you in a room, but that is no measure of freedom: what he has done is more insidious. He has shackled your mind. Does he not paint me as a bogeyman? Do you not fear me?”

“No!” I said. “I don’t!”

“Your voice says otherwise,” she said.

I buried my face in my knees.

She laughed softly. “There is no shame in admitting that we are wrong as long as we do the right thing in the end.”

“What if I did come to you?” My voice was muffled. “Would you stop chasing us?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And you’d leave Dad and my uncles alone?”

“Yes, as long as they kept out of my business.”

“And what if I told you that my choice was to live on my own or stay with Dad? Would you leave me alone then?”

“No.”

I swallowed back a host of angry words. “If I visited you,” I said, “would you stop chasing us?”

“Visited?”

“Temporarily. To see if I wanted to be with the Foot or not.”

“My dear, you do not understand. Your father has harmed you. You require care.”

“What if I don’t want your care?”

Her voice sharpened. “You will stay with us as long as it pleases me.”

“Then I’ve made my decision,” I said. “I’m coming to New York.”

Her voice brightened. “Oh?”

“As soon as I can,” I said. “I swear. I’ll get Dad to drive me.”

“Impossible. He does not belong in this equation.”

“Then maybe you should’ve kept it simple and fucked a human,” I said.

I hung up and turned the phone ‘round and ‘round in my hands. Then I stood up and pitched it into the field with all of my strength. It turned little cartwheels, hit a furrow, skipped in the dirt. A little cloud of earth followed it.

I was still standing there, squeezing my hands into fists, when I heard a low moan. I whirled around. Dad was stretching very slowly, testing each limb. When he saw me, he waved half-heartedly. I jumped into the car and dug around for food and drink, then hurried to his side.

“Saya,” he said with a raspy voice, cracking his neck. “Good. There you are.” He set his hand on my knee. He was shaking.

“What, did you think I’d leave?”

“Yes, actually.” He stretched, wincing when he raised the arm on his wounded side. “I dreamed you were talking to your mother.”

“About that.” I helped him up to his feet and stuck a drink in his hand. “I… picked up the phone when she called.”

He stiffened. “What?”

“Just drink and eat and I’ll tell you later.”

“Saya,” he said. “Smartphones contain a GPS chip. They can trace the call.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Why not?” There was a grim look on his face.

“Because I could use your help,” I said. “I want to kill Mother.”

He leaned against the wall as he drank the Gatorade. “That’s a tall order.”

“If we kill her, the attacks will stop,” I said. “Nobody else in the Foot is interested in me.”

“When I killed the Shredder, the Foot put a price on my head,” Dad said. “If we do this and someone discovers it, it’ll just start another round of honor killings.”

“Then it needs to look like an accident.”

He smiled. It was a grim smile.

“There are no accidents in the Foot,” he said.

“But you know everything about her.”

“I _did_. A lot can change in ten years.” He limped to the car and threw the door open. “Damn. Quarter tank.”

“So are you going to help me or not?” I asked.

He clenched the door frame and nodded once, looking out across the wheat fields. My heart sank.

“You don’t want to kill her.”

“I don’t,” he said, “but I will.” He sank into the car, wincing. “We don’t have time to wait. She’s probably got someone headed our way as we speak. Come on.”

“Maybe I should stay here and wait for them to pick me up,” I said. “Then they’ll leave you alone, and we can rendezvous in New York City. I can start casing the building.”

He started the car. “Don’t underestimate Karai.” He typed an address into the GPS. “The first thing she would do is send you to a place I can’t follow. There would be no way for you to contact me because she would keep you cut off from the rest of the world. She thinks you’re brainwashed and would want to correct your behavior at any cost. And if she decided to send you to the Bunker…”

My back itched. Reconstructive surgery on my face I wouldn’t mind, but I was fond of my homegrown armor.

“All right then,” I said, sliding into the passenger seat. “How are we going to do this?”

“We are going to drive until the car gives out or they stop us,” he said. “My goal is to head to Massachusetts first and visit the farm in Northampton. You remember where that is, don’t you?”

“Yeah, kind of,” I said. “But why?”

“To see if Donatello will join us,” he said. “If fortune smiles on us, we’ll grab Mikey, too.”

My heart quickened. “So everyone will be together again. Just like the old days.”

“Possibly.” Dad jerked his chin toward the back seat. “First things first. Let’s simplify. Get all the trash and throw it.” His gaze settled on the ransacked backpack; I didn’t dare meet his eye as I slid out of the door. He packed everything back into it slowly as I threw trash into the wind.


	4. Chapter 4

We crawled across the country, only stopping when we needed gas. I wish I could say that Dad punched the pedal to the floor, that we had roared up to Northampton like the devil himself pursued us, but he had to take several breaks a day, and he had to sleep all night. His color was terrible, and when he got tired he started weaving. We couldn’t afford to get pulled over.

His paranoia finally got the best of him somewhere near Chicago, and we stole the plates off of a parked car to replace our Florida ones. Now we were an Illinois vehicle, complete with Lincoln’s disembodied head. We stopped by a ravine to dispose of our old plates. I skipped the dust-dimmed double oranges into the brush.

The flat plains began to roll, and the corn and wheat gave way to hills of bushy trees and pasturage. Lakes and rivers glinted like silver between hills. The further north we went, the more peaked the roofs grew, the better to shrug off snow. Dad changed the route on the GPS several times so that we would keep off of the larger highways where the police and our pursuers were more likely to keep watch. When we grew tired, we pulled off behind abandoned buildings and slept. Once we stopped by a river for a quick bath. We needed it; we stank like death.

We didn’t talk all that much. Dad listened to the radio most of the time—classical music when he was feeling well, Top 40 when he needed help staying alert. At first, I didn’t mind. During the quick clean-up, I had found a few scuffed-up paperbacks beneath my seat—a collection of short stories about a barbarian and three dog-eared _Deadpool_ trades.

But eventually I was sick of the books and I’d seen everything of humanity that I’d cared to, and the truth of our journey started settling in the pit of my stomach. I started seeing images of Mom in my head: Mom striding down the street in her sunglasses, tall and straight and indomitable. Mom reclining in a witness stand as elegantly as a Queen on her throne, somehow larger than the judge beside her. Mom at the end of a table in a board meeting, her lackeys bent around her, her eyes blazing down at the photographer.

And then I imagined the scene back at the rest stop, but instead of the PI bleeding out beneath me, it was Mom with her tigress eyes. My knife was in her throat, and my hand held her down, and her blood pooled around us as she gasped for breath. Sick empty horror tightened in my stomach. I twisted around in my seat, thrust my knuckles into my mouth, and stared at my reflection in the window. It was with a start that I realized I had the curve of her jaw and her high cheekbones.

Only a second afterward, it occurred to me that she was no doughy private eye to roll over in shock, that I might not even have the chance to draw a knife before she had thrown me or broken my back or thrust some hidden blade through my throat. That way she lounged in pictures, perfectly poised—that was no mistake. And the suits around her… all Elites, I realized, with weapons and skills of their own. Somehow I would have to pass through a wall of Elites and then best her own formidable skills.

I gnawed my knuckles until I tasted blood. The only way, perhaps, was to be captured. And then I would have to get close, earn her trust. And if you get close, you get emotionally compromised, and you start feeling companionship, you can’t follow through, and when you can’t follow through, you are the one who dies. There’s a reason Dad told me not to look at my opponents in the face when I killed them.

The miles and the hours ticked by, the sun and the moon sweeping overhead in eternal pursuit. Signs and cars and signs and cars, a hundred little identical towns where normal people crept and slept. I went through one thousand murders in my head, and died horribly in all of them.

It couldn’t have been more than four days later that I looked up and saw the exit sign for Northampton. Down a winding set of roads, into the deep green trees, over fairytale stone bridges and plashing brooks, the ground freckled with gold, the undergrowth so thick with ferns, saplings, and bushes that you couldn’t see five feet in. I pressed my nose against the window and became hyperaware of my own heartbeat.

At last, Dad began to slow down, peering into the underbrush. Traffic wasn’t too heavy, but cars tailgated us, their drivers making faces and mouthing oaths, and when they were finally able to pass they roared past us in a huff. Dad didn’t seem to see them.

He finally pulled off onto a gravel drive, overgrown with weeds. A barbed-wire fence surrounded the property, some of the posts broken or bent down. A faded sign proclaimed, “Private Property: No Trespassing.” There was a lopsided gate hanging on one hinge, and a leaning mailbox that looked like it had been struck by a bat. The drive wound off between the elms and disappeared in a riot of greenery. Even through the window, I could hear the buzz of cicadas and the chattering of birds.

I was just unlocking the door when I heard a rustle of fabric. Dad was pulling Raph’s leather jacket carefully over his wounded arm.

“What are you doing?” I whispered. “I can get it.”

“Donatello wouldn’t recognize you,” he said, wiggling into his pants and boots, “and he’s probably got a camera trained on us right now.” He grabbed a ball-cap and pulled it low over his head, then stepped out slowly and limped to the gate. He left the door open.

I jumped out anyway and trotted alongside him.

“You should get back in the car,” Dad whispered.

“You might need help lifting the gate,” I said. “You’re still hurt.”

He rested his hand on my shoulder.

We had just grabbed and lifted the gate when a voice crackled out of the bushes.

“I know exactly who you are,” the voice said, “and unless you are bringing good news, such as the obituary of a particular crime lord, I suggest turning around directly and driving right back to wherever you came from.”

“I’m bringing something like good news,” Dad said. “If you’d care to listen.”

“And that would be…?”

“I am going to kill her, and I need all of the help I can get,” he said.

Silence.

“That,” said the voice, “will be one hell of a job. Come on in.”

A pneumatic pump hissed, and with a plaintive squeal, the gate lifted up out of our hands and swung wide.

“Quickly!” the voice snapped.

We jumped into the car and drove beneath the arms of the trees, the gate swinging shut behind us. We curved through golden pools of light, beneath shimmering leaves, and then the edges of the forest bent away and we broke into a clearing.

There was the farmhouse and the barn, just as I imagined them—peaked roofs, peeling paint, the weather vane topped with a rusty rooster. A windmill creaked in the breeze. The lawn was a riot of weeds—hadn’t been mowed in weeks. I could barely see the twinkle of the pond behind the house for the wild growth of bramble bushes. If someone had told me that the place had been abandoned, I would have believed them.

The barn door opened by itself, and Dad pulled in. I gaped: the walls were hung with tools, bins heaped with mechanical parts squeezed up against the walls, and a rack of servers blinked against the wall with an industrial fan blowing on them. Standing at the end of the building was a mutant turtle in a tattered trenchcoat and welder’s gloves, a bo staff strapped to his back. One touch on his phone and the barn doors groaned shut, cutting out the sunlight.

Dad turned off the car, took a deep breath, and stepped out. For the first time in my life, I felt like shrinking beneath the dashboard. I was suddenly a little too aware of my shell and half-baked plastron.

“Greetings to the prodigal son,” said Donatello, slipping the phone into his pocket. “I had a feeling you’d come back someday.” His eye fell on me.

“So there’s our little biological anomaly!” he said. “Come on out—don’t be afraid. I’m not going to dissect you.” He laughed like he had told a joke.

Dad frowned, but gestured at me anyway. I slid out of the door, books crushed against my chest like a breastplate.

“Adorable!” Donatello said. “You have matching contusions.”

 “Yes,” Dad said shortly. “Thank you for letting us in. Do you know where Mike is?”

“That I do,” said Donatello, kneeling and lifting a trapdoor. “As luck would have it, he’s here, as are April and Shadow. You should feel grateful that Casey is traveling. He would crucify you on the lawn.”

“Ah,” Dad said.

“Well, if the social niceties have been concluded, I suggest we leave this place,” Donatello said, patting the trapdoor. “Follow me.” He dropped beneath the floorboards. Dad and I followed.

We descended into a humid cement tunnel lit with faint yellow LED lamps, and the trapdoor clapped shut above us with a note of finality. Several passages weaved away from our own, but Donatello’s step never faltered. I swallowed. The walls were folding over me like clenching fingers.

“I built this back when the farm was more exposed to the road,” Donatello said, rubbing his hands together. “Never would have thought it would come in so handy. A little skullduggery for power and internet access, and a few alterations on our public records, and whallah! Our own personal fort. Now, I don’t mean to brag, but we could hold off a dozen attackers quite easily. I haven’t set traps—much more likely to harm us than the Foot, alas—but I’ve got the whole place bugged. I know when so much as a grasshopper steps on a leaf.”

“Good,” Dad said. “By the way, I see you have your bo. Have you been practicing?”

“Dusk and dawn, every day, even when it’s raining,” Donatello said, flicking the staff. He turned to grin at Dad. “Mike is another story.”

Dad grimaced.

“He’s more of a peacenik these days,” Donatello said, shrugging. “You don’t need to be fit and trim to publish books, anyway.”

“Really?” Dad’s face lit up.

“Really. Hit the bestseller list six months ago and they’re already making a movie. We’ve practically been living off of the guy. Shadow’s the one who’s been taking all the credit—you know, because April and Casey would be recognized in a heartbeat.”

“Wait. How old is she again?” Dad asked.

“Fifteen. Girl wonder.” Donatello swept his hand in a broad arc, making a dramatic face. “But she doesn’t go by Shadow in public, naturally. She goes by Evelyn G. Winslow. She wanted to be ‘Gabriella,’ but we had to nix that idea.”

“Does she… leave the farm often?”

“Oh, all the time. Don’t worry. It’s a calculated risk.” Don stopped at a ladder and pointed up, toward another trapdoor. “After you.”

Dad and I took it three rungs at a time, and Don followed. We rolled out into a linoleum-tiled kitchen. Ragged shades drooped in the windows. On the wall was a whiteboard with a grid drawn on it, the days of the week on the top row and names on the left: Donatello and April switched out cooking and laundry, Mike and Shadow alternated on dusting and vacuuming, and everyone took turns on the dishes. At the very bottom was a blank row labeled “Casey.” Someone had written there: “See you in June, chumps!” Just below that line was another sentence in different handwriting: “We saved the lawn for you! Happy birthday.”

I took a deep breath: air conditioning. The hum of a refrigerator. The smell of disinfectant. Clean, orderly. My eyes lit on a bowl of fruit sitting on the table.

“Where’s April?” Dad asked.

“She went shopping,” Donatello said. “She’s grabbing a few necessities in town. But she should be back late tonight, maybe around … whoah, kid, wait, wait!”

He lunged for me. Too late. I had grabbed an apple and stuffed it into my mouth. But the texture was all wrong and the taste was vile. One crunch and I was spitting plastic pieces on the floor. Donatello laughed and gently wiped my mouth off with the heel of his glove.

“Never seen fake fruit before, have you?” he said, and slapped me on the back. “Here, let me get you some real food. Sit down. Take a load off. Leo, do you need anything?” He sniffed. “Do you have an infection?”

“I may have gotten river water into a wound,” Dad said. He was swaying on his feet.

“Well, go get a shower, then. Nothing’s changed—towels are where they were last time, all of our medical supplies are in the cabinet, blah, blah, blah. We’ll talk murder once you get back.” Donatello threw his arm around Dad’s shoulder and pushed him, and then Dad was hobbling out of the room. Suddenly he was gone, and I was alone.

Donatello threw his gloves beside the trapdoor. “Now,” he said. “How about some sustenance, eh?”

“You sounded so much meaner over the intercom,” I said, setting my books on the table.

“I thought I was angry,” he said. “But I can’t stay that way. It’s a curse.” He opened the refrigerator and whipped out a real apple, tossing it to me. I snatched it out of the air and brushed it with my lips before biting down. It was real this time. Wrinkly, juicy, and sweet.

“So tell me,” he said, ducking into a cabinet. “What made you two decide to come this way?”

“I’m tired of running,” I said, crunching.

“And Leo?”

“I think he’s tired, too. He hasn’t been right since we fought Raphael.”

“Oh, is that what happened?” Donatello pulled out a pan. “I can’t believe he beat him. Ah… _did_ he beat him?”

“We sort of… didn’t fight him head on.”

“Good strategy. Raphael whipped us all at once one day and that was when we were all at peak form.” He stood over the stove, matches in hand. “So… he’s still working for the Foot?”

“Yes. He was going to return me so the Foot would leave you all alone.”

Donatello struck a match and lit the burner. I wished I could see his expression. He still had his back to me. It occurred to me that if anyone had something to gain by turning me in, it was him.

Don blew out the match. “That wouldn’t happen.”

I lowered my apple. “What?”

“Forgiveness. Karai is not known for her magnanimity, let’s just say that.”

“Mag… mag what?”

“Her kindness.” Donatello laughed. “She forgave us once, but she was out of her mind with grief about the murder of her daughter, and her position with the New York Foot wasn’t completely solid. She’ll murder the hell out of us the first chance she gets.” Donatello grinned at me as he cracked open a can of tomato soup. “Therefore, Karai’s assassination might be the best answer. This is her personal vendetta, not a company-wide one.”

“Can I ask you a weird question?” I asked.

“Weird is my specialty,” he said.

“Do… do you know why she would make me?” I asked.

“Ah. Well, I know the official reason,” Donatello said. “It was our ability to heal. The ooze that transformed us had some nice side effects, one of which is that we recover quickly from wounds and illness, including those that would kill lesser men. Specifically, you're closer to a human than we are, so it's easier to use your biology as a way to piggyback to a healing serum—perhaps one for a specific person who you're directly related to." He laughed humorlessly. "Guess who."

"Mom," I whispered.

"You'll figure out eventually that humans can't fight constantly," Don said. "They wear out. Their joints go to hell. Before you were born, Karai was limping around with a cane. She had at least a dozen surgeries during the time I knew her. Then bam. Overnight, she could bounce around like she was 20 again."

I thought of Dad lying against the wall, then rising as though from the dead.

He looked over his shoulder with a gap-toothed grimace. "Well, that was the official explanation, anyway. I always figured she wanted a kid who could take a couple of knife-thrusts. Sort of useful in her occupation.”

“She could’ve just gotten some ooze. Would've been simpler.”

“I don’t think the Utroms are just handing that out,” Donatello said, stirring. “They left Earth a long time ago. Besides, I think the two idiots, ah… had plans long-term. For example, before everything went wrong, Leo dropped some hints about going to Japan for a few years. ‘For training,’ he said. ‘To get closer to our roots.’ We joked with him about stowing away in crates with wild animals, but I suppose Karai would have taken him in her jet.”

“You mean he could’ve lied?” I asked. “He could’ve been planning something with her?”

Donatello looked up at me with narrowed eyes. “What’d he tell you?”

“That M… Karai didn’t tell him anything about me.”

“She may not have,” he said. “Something went catastrophically wrong near the end. I couldn’t get Leo to tell me what it was, but…” He whistled. “Let’s just say that it makes sense to me that you would have been conceived sometime before everything imploded.”

“Like a surprise.” I swallowed.

“Maybe so. Your parents genuinely liked each other and, dare I say it? They were a good match, if you look at personality, background, personal philosophy. For a while there, they were practically attached at the hip.” Donatello’s grin became furtive and he hurriedly began stirring at the soup. “Uh, that is, they were in similar positions and had similar views.”

I groaned. “Similar views! That’s all? Really?”

“What do you think makes people like each other? Fireworks? Dramatic music? Scenic backdrops?” Donatello raised an eyebrow. “You’ve got to understand something about your father: he doesn’t feel like he can open up to anyone. He never has. If he’s got a personal problem, he’ll die before he’ll tell you what it is. Karai is similar, although for different reasons—she’s surrounded by cutthroats. She can’t afford to admit anything that could be construed as weakness. Well, from I’ve been able to infer, they turned into confidantes and honest friends, and then everything went downhill after that. Once we had to go on a mission with Karai—she was undercover and we didn’t really understand why she would come personally at the time—and we were waiting for a target and had a little downtime. My god. Those two talked about hypothetical battles for three hours straight. I thought Raphael was going to shove them both off of the roof.”

“Dad never talks that long to me,” I said, sitting back in my chair.

“He’s obviously depressed.” Rapid stirring. “Ah, I can’t stay mad at the guy. God knows I should be; he erred spectacularly enough.” He started laughing. “Leo, a Romeo! Can’t say I saw it coming, no, no. Michelangelo, probably. Raphael, maybe. Leo? I voted him most likely to become a celibate old hermit. Ah, well. It makes me sad, honestly. In some other life, underneath other circumstances, they might’ve made it.”

I pressed my hands against my eyes. I tried to imagine Mom and Dad lounging across the table from each other and I couldn’t do it.

“You know what?” Donatello said softly. “I honestly don’t think that Karai wanted to send Leo away. I think someone caught their affair and that she was trying to save her position in the Foot.”

“But… she said she wanted to take off my shell.”

“To protect you, probably. Have her cake and eat it, too.” He leaned over the stovetop, clinking the spoon against the counter. Bright red slashes on the white countertop. “She couldn’t have him, but she could have you.”

I sagged against the back of the chair.

“Please keep in mind that this is just a hypothesis,” Donatello said. “There could be other factors that I am unaware of.” He lifted the spoon, dripping red, and stuck it in his mouth.

**

Donatello had just handed me the bowl of soup with saltine crackers when a tousle-headed girl slouched into the kitchen and ducked into the refrigerator. She was wearing pajama pants and a tank top, and her hair was snipped short and dyed black. There was a hoop in her nose. I froze, spoon halfway to my mouth, and my eyes flew to Donatello’s. His eyebrows waggled.

“Good morning, milady,” Donatello said. “Do you want some lunch? I’m making grilled cheese.”

“That sounds good,” the girl said. Her voice was thick from sleep. She pushed out of the refrigerator, carton of orange juice in hand, and turned to the table. Her eyes flew open when she saw me.

“Oh my god!” she said.

The carton slipped out of her hand, but before it could hit the ground, Donatello swung his leg out and caught it in the crook of his foot.

“Here, Shadow,” Don said, handing it back to her. “You dropped this.”

She grabbed at it numbly, her eyes still fastened on my face. “What happened to you?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

I stabbed the spoon into my mouth very deliberately.

Donatello hissed and slapped her on the back. “Nothing’s wrong with her. She’s my niece.”

“Ohhh.” Shadow looked back at him, then at me. “Then… you’re Leonardo’s little girl. That means…”

“Leonardo’s back, yes. Do you want any lunchmeat on your grilled cheese?”

“Sure, ham, whatever,” she said, and sat across from me. “I never thought I’d actually see you.” She extended a hand. “My name is Shadow.”

I touched the tips of her fingers and swiftly withdrew. “I’m Saya.”

She smiled and leaned over the table. “What are you doing here?”

Donatello busily pushed between us, setting two glasses on the table. “We’re going on an excursion to the city soon,” he said.

“What for?” Shadow asked. “The minute the Foot know you’re in town, you’ll be walking pincushions.”

“We’re going to assassinate Karai,” Donatello said. “Leonardo’s idea.”

I did not dare meet his eyes.

Shadow whistled. “One of the most powerful people in the Foot? Isn’t she surrounded by an army?”

“Most indubitably.”

“Good luck getting Mikey to come with,” said Shadow. “He’s under a deadline. Where is he, anyway?”

“He’s not in the attic?”

“No.”

There was a loud shout from the back of the house, then a gale of laughter, and someone talking rapidly. I caught a word that sounded like “finally.”

Donatello nodded sagely. “Ah, he found Leo.”

“Wow. We’ve nearly got the whole gang here.” Shadow took a long swig of orange juice. "What if Raphael shows up?”

“We pretend Leo and Saya aren’t here,” said Donatello. “And hopefully the Foot don’t follow him.”

“I feel like I should be angry, but at this point I’m too tired to care.” Shadow slumped onto her elbows. Her eyes rose to mine. “You’re awfully quiet. Is it about your mom?”

I glanced up from licking my soup bowl. “No,” I said. “I just don’t feel like talking right now, that’s all.”

“Damn, you’re intense for a kid,” Shadow said.

“I’m not a kid,” I snapped.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m not trying to insult you or anything,” Shadow said. “I just got up and I am so incredibly stupid right now.” She rubbed her eyes. “Uh… so, you’ve been traveling, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“So… a lot of sightseeing?”

I shrugged and looked at my lap.

“Have any hobbies? Any favorite cartoons, video games?”

“I like to read. I do katas.” I set the bowl down and wracked my brain. There was a long and uncomfortable silence.

Don slipped two plates in front of us. “ _Bon appétit_ , miladies.”

Shadow picked up her grilled cheese. “Reading and katas? That’s all?”

“She is her father’s child,” Donatello said from the cabinets.

“I… like food, I guess,” I said. “And… and baths.”

The silence was really uncomfortable now. I clamped my lips together. Donatello was looking at me with a crooked smile, something like pity in his face. Shadow’s brows were beetling. For once, I couldn’t think of anything to say. I didn’t even know what to feel. So instead of looking at Shadow or Don, I stuffed the grilled cheese in my mouth and concentrated on chewing it as long as I possibly could.

“Okay, today is officially Mission: Fun,” Shadow said, sitting straight up. “I’m going to show Saya the Xbox.”

“Maybe electronics are her preference,” said Donatello, sliding a chair up to the table and sitting between us. “Or mathematics.” His eyes lit up. “I have some old breadboards in the back.”

Shadow laughed and rapped her knuckles on his temple. “I said ‘fun,’ genius.”

I glanced at both of the visible doorways and wondered how quickly I could flee through them. Before I could move, there was a burst of laughter from the living room. A turtle with a fat, jolly face like a Buddha’s trotted into the kitchen. A bright green plastic flash drive dangled around his neck, and an artist’s smock splashed with paint was tied ‘round his ample waist. Dad was limping behind him, freshly wrapped in bandages and stinking of antiseptic, and to my shock, there was a grin on his face. An honest-to-god grin!

This should have made me happy, but for some reason, it completely unsettled me. Somehow, suddenly, and without warning, I was an outsider looking in.

“There she is!” Michelangelo said—for it had to be Michelangelo—and without a word of warning he swept down and threw his arms around me. He smelled like acrylic paint and mothballs. I stiffened like someone had thrown spiders on me, my eyes bugging out. It felt like every muscle in my body had been replaced with wet cement.

Shadow grimaced and mouthed, “Sorry.”

“Long time no see,” Mike said, standing back and grinning at me. “Last time I saw you, you were just a little burrito.”

I glanced wordlessly at Dad. _Oh, please, get me out of here._

Dad’s smile fell. “Ah, Saya. Do you need to use the shower?” he said. “Come on. I’ll show you where it is.”

I pushed the chair back and rushed to his side, chin on my chest.

“Aw, I’m sorry,” Mike said. “Did I scare her?”

“No, no, you’re fine!” Dad said. “She’s just overwhelmed. We’ve had a long day.”

We slipped into the living room just in time. Tears started pouring out of my eyes. I couldn’t stop them, and god, did I try. I held my breath, I pressed my fists against my eyes, I tried every single psychological trick I knew. I only sobbed louder and harder. I didn’t want the people in the kitchen to hear me and yet there was no way they couldn’t have. I thrust my arm through Dad’s, and he curled his hand protectively around my head and let me cry into his side. When had I last cried like that? When Dad was teaching me how to kill rabbits? I had to practically be a baby.

When we stopped at the bathroom door, he knelt in front of me.

“Are you going to be all right?” he asked. “They didn’t say anything to hurt you, did they?”

“N-no!” I tried to think of Dad’s photo, the four brothers laughing knee-to-knee, and suddenly the memory of it was terrible. They were too close. They were way too close. There needed to be a room’s length between all of them.

He drew me into a hug and I buried my face into his throat. The sound of his heartbeat was comforting.

“Look,” he said. “We don’t have to do this. We can leave if you want.”

“It’s not that!” I said.

“Then what is it?”

“There’s too many people!” I said. “And… and I feel stupid.”

“Stupid?” He rocked back on his heels. “Why?”

I rubbed furiously at my face. “I don’t know!”

He sucked on the insides of his cheeks a moment, then stood.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said. “Get cleaned up. I can wash your clothes for you. Just set them outside of the door.”

I slipped into the bathroom and closed the door. The air was still moist and warm from Dad’s shower, and golden motes of light danced at the high-set window. I turned the water on full blast, the better to cut myself off from the rest of the house, and stood beneath the showerhead scowling as dirt and old blood swirled down the drain.


	5. Chapter 5

When I poked my head out again, Shadow was standing against the wall, a bundle of clothes in her arms. I closed the door until there was barely enough space to slide an envelope through it.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “Where’s my dad?”

“I’m on laundry duty,” she said. “Your clothes aren’t ready yet, so I brought you some of my old ones.”

“Thanks,” I said, and flung my arm out. She pressed them into the crook of my arm. I dragged them inside and locked the door.

“I just wanted to apologize for how I talked to you today,” she said through the door. “I just wasn’t thinking. Do you think we can start over? I’d like to be friends.”

I pulled a shirt over my head and didn’t answer. There was a brief burst of fear when I realized that I was still damp and she’d be able to see the faint outline of my plastron.

Shadow cleared her throat. “Anyway, when you’re done in there, let me know. I’ll show you to the place you’re gonna sleep. It’s on the second floor and it has a great view of the pond.”

“Where’s my dad?” I asked. The t-shirt was baggy, but the pants fit just right for once. I wondered if I could sneak them out with my stuff when we left the farm.

“He’s with Mike and Don in the barn. They have a lot to talk about.”

I knew without her saying it that they weren’t coming back anytime soon. Jealousy jabbed at my insides, and a helpless frustration swept over me, and then anger for feeling that way at all. Scrunching my shoulders so that my shirt bagged over my chest, I slipped out of the bathroom. I couldn’t stop thinking about how ugly my hair was when it was wet. Just looking at Shadow’s hair—thick, glossy, fabulously messy, like a model's—gave me pangs.

“This way,” she said, and led me back through the kitchen and up a flight of stairs. Everything creaked: the floorboards, the wall panels, the banister. I could hear a mutter on the upper floor growing louder and louder.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Who’s what?”

“I hear someone talking.”

“Oh, that’s just my TV,” she said. “You’ve watched TV before, right?”

“Yeah.” Once I had stood in front of a wall of TVs in a supermarket for an hour, watching a movie. Dad had been forced to come in after me.

“Have any favorite shows?”

“No.” A lot easier than saying that my only glimpses of televisions had been while I was walking past them.

“Well, you can watch mine as long as you want,” she said. “But first things first. Here’s where you’ll be sleeping.”

She opened a door onto a small bedroom with two beds in it, pictures hanging crookedly on the walls, and little square windows glancing out over the trees. My books were already sitting on the nightstand beneath an old lamp. Dad’s backpack was sitting next to his bed, both pairs of his katana lying side by side under a square of light. My heart jumped. It didn’t seem right that they should be lying out where anyone could see them.

“If there’s anything I can do to help you,” she said, “just ask, okay? I’ve got the room at the end of the hall.” She pointed. “Plus, I’ve got a full bookcase in there if you need any new reading material.”

For a long moment, I stared at the books I had read and reread lying on my bed. An intense longing to shut the door on Shadow rolled over me, to pull down the shades and disappear under the covers. Just as I turned to push her out, a catchy theme song blared from her room. I’d read about sirens in our mythology book a hundred times, and honest to god, I think that if one were singing to me, it would sing that stupid song.

I looked at her feet. “Can I watch your TV?” I asked.

“Yeah! Sure. Come on.” She reached down as though she were going to take my hand, but when I shrank away she stopped.

“Sorry!” she said. “Seriously, I’m just not paying attention today. Totally stupid. Don’t stay up late like me or you’ll lose half of your brain.”

She led me into her room, which was across from ours, and threw the door open. Her room had been the victim of a clothing explosion. The closet doors hung open, a heap of garments standing knee-high on the floor. Studded belts looped over her bedframe, dark shirts and ripped jeans were wadded up under and over the bed, and a flock of socks peered out from beneath her desk. Styrofoam cups and bottled sodas were clustered on her nightstand, and an old laptop with disproportionately large speakers sat on her desk. But none of that mattered as much as the flatscreen television hanging on the wall. I stared up at it with my mouth hanging open.

“Like it?” Shadow asked. “Mike bought it for me. You know, for playing ‘author.’” She threw herself down on her bed, grabbed a remote off of her nightstand, and threw it to me. Without thinking, I ducked, and it clattered into the hall.

We both looked after it, then at each other. My face burned.

“Hey, it’s okay!” Shadow said. “It’s okay. I have dropped that thing in the sink before. It’ll survive.”

I retrieved it and slunk up to her, holding it out.

“Go ahead, keep it.” She pushed it back toward me. “Do you want to watch a show or a movie? I’ve got all kinds.” She reached underneath a pile of jeans and extracted a CD case, and when she flipped it open it was full of DVD-RWs with movie titles scribbled on the fronts in permanent marker.

I was just about to freeze again when there was a squawk on the television. There on the screen was a little green boy in a purple jumpsuit, flinging his arms in dramatic circles. At first I didn’t understand him, he was talking so fast. And then, without even blinking, he flashed down to the floor. He had become a wolf.

“Like it? That’s _Teen Titans_ ,” said Shadow. “I’ve got all the seasons.”

“Who’s he?” I asked, pointing at the boy, who was scratching his ear.

“Beast Boy.”

“Can he turn into any animal?”

“Anything that he wants. Even extinct ones.” Shadow pulled the pillows off of her bed and thrust one into my arms. “Here, sit on this. I’ll go make some popcorn.”

That evening was a blur. I don’t remember her leaving the room and I don’t remember her coming back. I do remember that she sat down beside me with a bowl of popcorn. Later there was a pizza and a can of Sprite. At first I didn’t touch the food, but then my curiosity got the best of me, and soon I was digging in with the same fervor that Shadow had. Salt and butter and cheese, crammed it all in my face like I was an endless chasm. To be honest, I don’t even remember what half of the shows were about. I was just drunk on the colors and the sounds and the grease and a team of super-powered children who didn’t need parents. Outside, the sky purpled, the clouds bunched up into golden castles, and the stars popped out one by one.

**

I woke up wrapped in a blanket on the floor. The television was still on, but muted. My stomach hurt and my mouth was dry. I sat up, blinking, and groped for one of the sodas. Someone was talking just outside in the hall.

“Yeah, all she did was watch cartoons. She’s fine! I gave her pizza.”

“That’s not a real supper, Shadow.”

“Mom. She’s probably never had pizza. It’s good for the soul. Believe me, she needs it. The poor kid thinks everything’s out to kill her." Her voice lowered conspiratorially. "She doesn’t even make a sound when she walks!”

“Leo trained her up that way, honey. And, to be fair, I don’t think the guys had a proper childhood either.”

“But they’re fine, more or less. I mean, Mike is a teddy bear, and even when Don’s in one of his moods, you can have a conversation with him. But Saya isn’t like that. It’s like she’s completely shut off. She’s mature, but not in a good way.”

A long sigh. “There’s nothing we can do. Just don’t say anything to Leo about it.”

“I did talk to Leo.”

“You _what_?”

“God, Mom, it’s okay. He agreed with me. Like I said: this is medicine.”

“Shadow, I… it’s too late for this. That’s all I can say.”

There was a pause. “Mom? Are you okay?”

A long sigh. “No. No, I’m not.”

“Is it Leo?”

“Trouble’s been following him, honey, and I’m so tired of trouble.”

“Don’t you dare tell them to leave.”

“I won’t. I can’t. We’re in this together, for better or for worse.” A dry chuckle. “Oh, I could’ve run into a group of sanitation workers…”

Someone shuffled down the hallway, kinky hair tied back in a ponytail; I saw her face limned in a dim yellow light. Then the door at the end of the hall clicked shut. I quickly curled back up on the floor, just in time: Shadow stepped into the room and leaned on the door. I could feel her eyes lingering on me.

**

When I woke up again, it was probably about six AM, and I had rolled up against the wall and curled into a ball. I could hear a rooster crowing far away. The TV was off and Shadow was draped over her bed with her limbs flung everywhere. It physically hurt me to look at her.

I slipped up to the window and peered out. The clouds were mounding into fantastic shapes above the horizon, glowing like heaps of fresh-baked pastries. The trees whispered together and there were birds discussing politics up in the canopy. Down below, still shielded by the wall of trees, the pond was black as ink. Perhaps its darkness was why I didn’t see the cairn at first—a pile of stones stacked neatly into a dome by the edge of the water. Nor did I see Dad until he shifted a little. He was sitting on the bank, legs crossed, arms on his legs, chin touching his chest. The fabric-bound katana lay across his knees.

I pulled on my tennis shoes. Tiptoeing down the stairs, I crept out of the front door. For a moment the entire world was glorious: the air fresh and cool, the flowers nodding in the breeze, the overgrown lawn twinkling, each leaf heavy with dewdrops. I took a few deep breaths to clear my lungs and marched off through the grass, cutting a dark path and drenching myself in dew. I was nearly to the pond when I flushed a flock of quail; they scattered toward the woods.

Dad looked up. He smiled. It was a tired expression.

“Good morning, Saya,” he said, patting the stone by his side.

“Good morning.” I settled beside him.

We sat together quietly as the sun rose, touching each tree with light, slowly filling the darkness between the branches. A woodpecker beat a tattoo across the copse, and an insect buzzed by. The crown of the farmhouse shone like amber. Someone in a white shift moved in one of the windows, then looked out at us. I think that Dad would have acknowledged them, but he had drifted away again. I pretended not to see.

The wind stirred the grass growing between the stones and fluttered in the loose wrapping on the katana.

 _So_ , I thought, staring at the cairn, this _would have been my grandfather._

I wondered if I still had a grandfather on the other side of my family, and if I would like him. He probably wouldn’t like me.

I felt nothing at this thought, and wondered if that were wrong. I couldn’t imagine traveling across an entire country, sick and tired and beat up, and getting up before dawn to sit in front of my dad’s grave. If he died, I’d have an ache, I guess; I’d miss his presence. But sitting in front of his bones wouldn’t ease it any.

Dad rose to his feet. The swelling in his face and arm had gone down and he almost looked normal. Just as I was beginning to smile, Dad lifted the bundle in his arms, and with a savage ferocity, launched it across the pond.

I stumbled to my feet. “Dad! No!”

The bundle dropped into the water like a stone and was gone. A flock of birds scattered into the sky, then dropped back into the trees again. I swallowed convulsively and looked up at his face.

“Why did you do that?” I said. “They were so beautiful!”

“Your mother gave them to me,” he said, and turned toward the farmhouse.

“But I was hoping you’d give them to me someday!” I said.

He looked stricken for a moment, but the look passed, and he set his jaw.

“That set was poison,” he said.

“It was not! It was beautiful! It was the most beautiful thing we had and you threw it in the pond!”

“It has been done. I needed to do this.”

“Maybe you do, but I don’t!” I pushed my shirt over my head.

“Saya! What are you doing?”

I kicked off my shoes and pants. “What do you think?”

He grabbed for my arm, but I dashed out of his reach and plunged into the water.

God, it was cold! It stole the breath right out of me. But I didn’t lose my head. I paddled hard out to where I thought it had sunk, sucked air, and I dove.

I thrust down as hard as I could, kicking hard, groping blindly in the darkness. I broke through one layer of cold water, then another, hands outstretched. I felt nothing. How deep was it here, anyway? Oh my god, what if it had fallen so deep that I could never find it again? Sick emptiness flooded through me. Katana will rust _in the sheath_. They _mold_. All you have to do is breathe on them and they begin to consider suicide. Of course Dad would throw them into an entire pond, of course he would! Terrifying images passed through my head: the blades irreversibly damaged in mere days, the wooden sheaths with their elegant lacquer-work swelling and cracking, the sleek fabric hilts marred by filth!

Intense blank terror jolted through me. Even though I desperately needed to breathe, I struggled deeper and deeper, and finally thrust my arms through mud. Soupy mud, mud up to my elbows, and it felt like it went deeper than that. Sparks flashed behind my eyelids.

Suddenly a hand batted at my ankles, then grabbed me around the calf and pulled. I twisted away, but it was weak and stupid and uncoordinated, and that gave Dad the chance to throw an arm around my waist. I wriggled, but he clamped me tightly to his side. With a few powerful strokes, he drove skyward, and we broke the surface.

I panted for breath, twisting and snarling in his grip, my eyes full of frustrated tears, but he only put me in an arm lock and thrust his elbow around my chin. I couldn’t even think of biting him, and my legs churned uselessly in the water.

“Saya,” he hissed in my ear, “how old are you?”

I took a deep breath and ceased struggling.

“How old?”

“Ten,” I said as best I could.

“Good to know. And whose swords did I throw in the water?”

“Mom’s.”

“No. Mine. And this ritual was mine.” He exhaled.

“But they were so beautiful!”

“Many terrible things are beautiful, even laudable,” he said. “Now. Why are we here?”

“To… to kill Mom.”

“That’s right. And any alliance I have with her, however small, must be completely obliterated.”

The candid photograph flashed up against my eyelids. I was very still.

“Now. If I let you go, are you going to return to the house?”

All the fire had gone out of me. I was shivering hard.

“Y-yeah.”

“And you won’t go after them again?”

I didn’t answer, but his grip tightened painfully on my arms.

“They’re going to rust!” I said.

“Everything returns to dust someday,” he said. “It was only necessary that these return a little sooner.”

“Dad!” I said, my voice strangled. “Let me go!”

He dropped me. I thrashed uselessly in the water a moment, then paddled toward the bank. He sliced through the water beside me, eyes narrowed.

There was a woman on the bank in a white bathrobe, arms wrapped around her belly. I recognized the kinked hair immediately. My response was to draw short from the bank, ducking out of sight behind some tall reeds, but Dad grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me out of the water. We struggled out of the mud and into the grass. I wrapped my arms around my chest and hunched over, praying she wouldn’t look too closely.

“Leonardo!” the woman said. “What’s going on?” Her eyes widened. “Are you bleeding?”

I startled when I saw a trickle of bright red staining his bandages.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Saya, have you met April O’Neil yet?”

I shook my head, staring at my feet.

“Look at her,” Dad said sharply. “Don’t look at the ground.”

“Shh, Leo, it’s okay,” April said. “Come on. Get inside and dry off before you get sick.”

“Saya, get your clothes,” Dad said. “Go on.”

I picked them up in slow motion. Out of the corner of my eye I saw April and Dad whispering to each other, then April walking back up to the house. For a minute I hoped Dad would follow, but he did not. He waited for me.

“What are you doing?” I asked at last.

“I’m making sure you don’t dive back into the pond.”

“But Dad!”

“But nothing. We are not by ourselves anymore,” he said. “Do you understand that?”

“Yes,” I said. I couldn’t look him in the face.

“These people are caring for us at great risk to themselves.”

“I know!” I snapped.

“Do you really want to see your mother die?” he asked. “Or was that just an impulse?”

I didn’t say anything.

“I will kill her,” Dad said softly. “If I don’t, then Mike or Don will. Can you live with that?”

I clutched the clothes to my chest and started to cry again, big stupid tears. “I don’t know!” I said. “I don’t know! It seemed so straightforward at first, but now I don’t know if I want it at all!”

He knelt beside me and tipped my chin up. “Look at me,” he said.

I did. His expression was strained.

“Do you want to go to her?” he asked.

I hesitantly shook my head.

“If we are going to kill Karai, then we all need to be on the same page,” he said. “You must be prepared for the worst, and prepared absolutely. If you have your blade at her neck, you must not hesitate. She certainly won’t.”

“When are we going to do it?” My voice was hushed.

“Not immediately,” he said. “I have to heal, Mike has to get back in shape, and Donatello is engaging in extensive reconnaissance. This may take as long as a year to prepare for, and that’s if Raphael doesn’t bring the Foot to us first.”

“But the police got him.” I glanced furtively at the cairn. “Maybe they shot him.”

“If he’s in the Foot’s employ, they’ll get him out in no time. My guess is that he’ll have to heal, too, and that he’ll be after us as soon as he can get on his feet. Until then, we must prepare to the best of our abilities.”

“Breakfast!” someone shouted from the farmhouse. I looked up and saw Michelangelo leaning out of the window, waving.

Dad waved back and stood. “I have a new exercise for you. When someone speaks to you, you look at them in the face. If they ask you a question, you respond respectfully. No looking at your feet.”

“But I don’t like it when they look at me!”

“Why not?”

“Because they can see how messed up I am.”

A bemused blink. “In what way?” he asked.

“What do you think?” I asked, and dropped the bundle away from my chest. “Does this look normal to you?”

“Yes. Do I look normal to you?” he asked.

“What… of course you do!”

“You must not have seen many real turtles, then,” he said. A slow smile cracked across his face.

“Well, at least I know exactly what you are when I look at you,” I said. “But when people look at me, it’s like… it’s like… they don’t know what I am or what happened to me.”

“They don’t know you yet, that’s all. You should have seen April’s face when she saw us for the first time. Plus, you did get a good smack in the face.” He gently turned my head to the side.

I sighed and leaned into his shoulder. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Neither do I.” He pried my shirt from beneath my arm and stuck it over my head. “Get dressed. Come on.”

“I’m… sorry about your wound,” I said as I pulled my pants on.

“Don’t worry. It happened. All we can do is take these things in stride. Now come on.” He wrapped his arm around my neck and dragged me up toward the house. I staggered against his side, punching at his arm.

“Dad! I swear I’m not going back!”

He dropped me and pushed me ahead of him, chuckling softly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> She's an old ten.


	6. Chapter 6

Breakfast was scrambled eggs and bacon with toast and cantaloupe. I wolfed it down so fast that my stomach hurt. After breakfast and showers, Dad slapped his ball-cap and some sunscreen on me and dragged me out to the field behind the house. He introduced me to a grimy old lawnmower. He showed me how to attach a bag, fill it with gas, prime it, yank the cord, and where exactly he wanted me to dump the clippings.

“We need a big enough space that we can practice in,” he said. “Mow up to the trees.”

“But this place is huge!”

“Better get started, then,” he said.

I glanced up at Shadow’s room. I could barely see the black corner of her television hanging over the window. His gaze followed mine.

“Don’t worry. I’ll help you,” he said. “There’s a second machine that Don is repairing as we speak. I’ll take the other side.”

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to mow tall grass, but it is clearly a form of torture. The mower choked to death countless times, and I had to stop to unclog it so often that I developed a crick in my back. By ten, both of my hands were as green as Dad’s. By noon, I had cleared a pathetically small, bruised, steaming square in the field. I slumped underneath a tree for a break, fanning myself with the cap. I hadn’t gotten enough sunscreen on my face and there was a nasty bright pink spot growing right on my nose.

“Hey! Over here!” April gestured at me from the porch. She was sitting with a laptop and holding a glass pitcher aloft. It glittered like gold in the sunlight, bobbing with ice and lemons. I lunged to my feet and slogged to the porch.

“Here you go,” she said, handing me a lemonade. “Why don’t you sit a while? Ooh… you need sunscreen.”

I forced myself to look at her in the eye. Her smile was genuine. I gave her one of mine, which I’m afraid was a bit crooked, and sat beside her on the bench. She had a tube of sunscreen sitting beside her and smeared it on my face and the top of my head with officious hands. For a while there was only silence between us as we looked out on the clearing, ice clinking in our glasses. April had turned on a fan, and the breeze was delicious in the muggy heat.

“It’s nice to have everyone together again,” she said at last.

“It’s… nice to meet everyone,” I said, a bit mechanically.

“Nothing but adventures with these guys,” she said. “As I’m sure you’ve already noticed.” She looked down at her keyboard and started typing. When I glanced over, I saw paragraphs full of nonsensical words and symbols.

“What are you doing?”

“Coding,” she said. “Well. PHP, CSS, HTML. What we use for websites.”

“Oh,” I said slowly.

Mike stepped out onto the front porch, mopping his forehead with a hand towel.

“Gotta say, April,” Mike said, “not crazy about this whole exercise thing.”

 “I can’t say I blame you,” April said. “What are you up to?”

“Walking, right now,” Mike said. “And cutting back on the beer and butter. My heart!” He leaned back on the wall. “Do you think lemonade would be a no-no?”

“Probably.”

“Whoops.” He picked up a glass and topped it. “Don’t tell Leo.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” April said.

Mike sank down on the porch floor next to me and stared out into the field. “You’re doing a great job there, Saya,” he said. “I’ll bet Leo has us out there tomorrow morning at 5:30 sharp.”

“I thought you had a deadline,” I said.

“Yeah, I do. I told the publisher that I needed it extended. I can work in the evenings. Uh, if I can stay awake.” He took a big swig of the lemonade. “Damn, I forgot how hard exercise was.”

“Walking?” April asked.

“I’ll have none of your sass,” Mike said, shaking a finger at her.

“Well, honestly, Mike,” April said, “I want you to come back in one piece. I mean that. If you can’t get ready, don’t go at all.”

Mike took a deep breath and leaned back against the porch railing. “Honestly, April, I wish I didn’t have to. I’m not looking forward to this. I’m not sorry about what I learned when I was a kid, but… you know, I did some things that I’m not proud of. I wish I could tell Leo ‘no.’”

“If you can’t, you can’t,” I said. “We’ve all got to be on the same page.”

Mike laughed and patted me on the knee. “There are some things you gotta do because they’re right.”

“Like get yourself killed?” April said. “If you guys foul up, you’ll have Elites on you. Elites!”

“Relax. Leo and Donnie are trying to think up some way we can do this without a big show. Like… I don’t know. Putting the blame on a different criminal group or slipping some poison in a teabag or whatever. Maybe I won’t have to fight at all.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I turned my glass around in my hands. “Maybe I should turn myself in. Numbers, you know?”

“Numbers?” Mike asked.

“If I go back, maybe they’ll leave all of you alone,” I said. “Six happy people, and… just one person who has to… to…”

“No way, little burrito,” Mike said. “I don’t know if you’ve met Karai yet, but she’s not going to forgive us that easy.”

“Besides, we have no idea what they’ll do to you,” April said. “You’re part of our family now, Saya. We’re going to do our best to make sure you’re safe.”

“But you only just met me.”

“What are you talking about? I liked you the first time I met you.” Mike popped an ice cube in his mouth. “You know what I was angry about, though? Your dad just taking off like that. Damn, he is dramatic. Always trying to take one for the team, even when he doesn’t need to.”

I thought of the swords and ground my teeth together.

“Sorry, sorry,” Mike said, pushing himself to his feet. “You need a break from the mowing, kiddo? I can take over for a while. Gimme that.” He stole my ball-cap and jumped out into the grass.

“Wait!” I said. “I wasn’t…”

Mike stuck his fingers in his ears and shrilled a hideous rendition of “Barbie Girl” all of the way to the lawnmower.

April poured me another glass of lemonade. “Don’t leave just yet. He’ll probably be back in five minutes.”

**

April was not even halfway right. Dad pushed the fixed lawnmower up to the back porch only to see Mike chugging away and me sipping at my fourth glass of lemonade. He pointed at me, then at the mower. I groaned and went back to work. Mike wadded up my ball-cap and threw it at me, but it fell halfway and we lost it in the grass. I found it two hours later when I ran over it and shot chunks of red plastic all over the yard.

We finished our work just as the sun touched the horizon. Mike met me halfway and raised his hand.

“High three!” he said.

I slapped his open palm and he pumped his fist in the air. My cheeks ached all the way up to the house—it took me that long to realize that I was smiling.

We collapsed in the kitchen and leaned into each other. April was cooking hamburgers, and set ice water in front of us. We were a silent, droopy-eyed pair, stinking of sweat and cut grass and gasoline. Not long afterward, Dad and Don stepped in. I didn’t know what they had been doing, but they smelled like dust, and during dinner they read printouts. Don was examining building schematics, and he was so engrossed that at one point he missed his mouth and spooned baked beans all over his chest.

“So,” April said. “What are you guys planning for tomorrow?”

“We start training,” Dad said.

Mike groaned.

“Lightly!” Dad said.

Mike leaned into me and moaned like a dying cow. I thrust my head beneath my arms so nobody could see me grinning.

April got up and rinsed her plate. “Well, don’t wait up for me. I’m definitely sleeping in tomorrow. Remember to eat, _Donatello_.”

Donatello waved at her without looking and flipped a page.

Shadow ran into the kitchen, slapped a hamburger together on a plate, stuck a wad of french fries in her mouth, and dashed out again.

“Hey!” April shouted. “Not in your room!”

“Hrrrmff!” Shadow said from the stairs, and was gone.

“Can I go?” I asked, standing up. “I need to take a shower.”

“Sure,” Dad said idly.

I slipped up the stairs for my clean clothes and stopped at Dad’s bed. The three-ring binder lay next to his pillow. All of the photographs had been carefully arranged on the mattress in columns and rows according to size. Staring up at me from the center was the good photo of Mom, her expression unreadable in the fading light. There was no hesitation. I picked it up, slipped it into my pocket, and ran to Shadow’s room. She was sitting cross-legged at her desk, hovering over a textbook, her cell lying in the crease. I shook her by the arm.

“Yeah?” Shadow asked, pushing her headphones off onto her shoulders. “What is it?”

“I need to hide a picture,” I said. “Do you have any good ideas?”

“What picture?”

I drew out the photo of Mom. “This one.”

“Oh.” Shadow took it from me, carefully cupping the corners. “Is this your mom?”

“Dad is destroying everything that has anything to do with her,” I said. “I want to keep at least one thing of hers.”

Shadow bit her bottom lip. “Wow. Who’s she looking at, do you think?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s Dad.”

“She looks like they’re telling her a bad joke,” Shadow said.

I couldn’t help it; I smiled. “Maybe they are.”

“Well, I have got just the place!” Shadow said.

She took a piece of double-sided tape and slapped Mom’s photo behind one of the poster frames in her room, the one with a TARDIS haloed by disembodied _Doctor Who_ heads.

After my shower, I spent the evening cross-legged in Shadow’s room, one eye on the TV and the other on the hallway. I thought I saw Dad enter the room, then come back out and stand at our door for a second, but he didn’t stand there long. Soon he was gone.

The binder filled with text and blueprints, and Mom’s pictures disappeared. When I slipped into bed that evening, Dad wished me goodnight. He never asked me about the photo.

**

It seemed like I hadn’t been asleep for very long at all before Dad shook me awake. We bumped shoulders with Mike on the way down the stairs, trooped through the kitchen and grabbed Donatello, and stretched on the front porch. Thick, cold fog had swallowed up the farmhouse. We crept into the pre-dawn light like a gaggle of ghosts. Dad stood at the head of our group, head down, facing the ranks of trees, _bokken_ hanging in his hand.

“Katas, then?” Donatello asked, leaning on his bo.

“Do you remember any of the katas, Mike?” Dad asked.

Donatello rolled his eyes as he sheathed his weapon.

“Uh, sure,” Mike said. “The basics? I think I remember.”

“Yes. Just a warm-up.”

We took different spaces and settled into stances, and all of us began with the first and easiest katas. Dad was slow and deliberate, putting very little stress on his left side, and sometimes only gesturing lightly to mark the place of a punch or a spin. As for Donatello, he really hadn’t lied about practicing. He whipped through his katas with exquisite form and without breaking a sweat. I was sore and stiff and sloppy, and Dad constantly stopped to correct me—wordlessly moving my fists over or pushing a knee down, batting me on the back of the head if I tried to skip anything. Mike paused several times and leaned over to me to ask about what came next, and every time he did, Dad looked over at us and frowned.

“What?” I asked at last. “He doesn’t remember.”

“Besides, bro,” Mike said, “even you said it was light work today.”

“Just remember that this is serious,” Dad said. “No playing around.”

My face flushed and I glanced at my uncles. Mike and Don locked eyes for a second, unsaid things flashing between them.

When the sun burned off the mist, Dad told Mike and me to pair off and practice grappling and throws. We started small—twisting out of a wrist grab, for example—and moved up to leg sweeps and pantomiming joint breaks. Generally, when you’re practicing the motions, your partner doesn’t fight back. But Mike started slipping out of my grip, or resisting my grabs, or he would plant his feet and not let me knock him down.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m not going down so easy,” he said. “That’s what.”

So I grabbed his arm and swept my leg to flip him onto his back. He dramatically flung himself to the ground at my feet.

“How could you do this to me, little burrito?” he said, thrusting a hand over his heart.

“How am I supposed to practice like this?” I asked.

“This _is_ practice. I’m practicing my falling,” he said, and jerked my leg out from under me. I hit the ground so hard the breath was knocked out of me, but when I sucked it back in I found myself laughing. Mike rolled over, cackling, and started tickling me.

I was only aware of Dad a split-second before he was on us. He drove his heel into Mike’s chest, knocking him back over the grass, and his _bokken_ was on my throat before my smile had time to disappear.

Mike coughed and rolled over onto his knees. “Whoah, whoah, slow down!” He grabbed at Dad’s wrist. “What are you doing?”

Dad shrugged him off. “Do you think this is a joke?”

Donatello shook his head. “You said it was going to be light work, Leonardo.”

“Do you think that the Foot will give us quarter?”

“No, man, of course not!” Mike said, staggering to his feet. “But we’re not the Foot and this is just—and I quote—‘light practice.’ Light practice!”

“And it’s still practice!” Dad said. “If I’m going to lead this expedition, I expect everyone to follow orders exactly.”

“I don’t like your tone, man. Don’t talk down to me.” Mike took a deep breath. “We’re not kids anymore, and you’re not Splinter.”

Dad raised his _bokken_ and staggered to his feet. He’d started bleeding again. I quickly crabwalked back across the lawn before jumping up to my feet beside Mike. I was shaking, hard.

Dad took a deep breath and ran a hand over his forehead. “What do you expect me to do?” he asked. “We are going to face Elites, and Karai alone will be…” His voice faded off.

“No one’s arguing about that, man.” Mike’s voice gentled. “Uh, maybe we need to talk over what this whole training thing means to us individually. Personally, I think we need to lighten up a little _because_ it’s serious.”

Dad threw down his _bokken_ and stalked off into the trees. His head dropped when he passed beneath the branches, and his shoulders hunched, and then he was gone.

I set my jaw and looked away, my face hot. Mike looked despairingly at Don.

 “I’m not going after him,” Don said.

“Aw, shit,” Mike said under his breath, and trotted off. I followed, but before I could get very far, Don grabbed my wrist.

“No,” he said. “Leave them. Let’s go have breakfast.”

“But…”

“Mike’ll get it straightened out,” Don said. “Come on.”

**

Don made pancakes: beating the spoon against the mixing bowl, flipping the pancakes with sharp slaps, slamming the microwave door shut. He began humming as he set the pancakes down in front of me, but it was just meaningless noise. There was something heavy and unsaid hovering in the room.

When Donatello set his plate down, my mouth seemed to open of its own accord.

“I’m sorry,” I said flatly. “I’m sorry about Dad.”

“What is there to be sorry about?” Donatello asked.

“Because he’s… he’s being so strange.” I knotted my hands into fists on the table.

Donatello carefully cut his pancakes into quarters, then eighths. “Saya,” he said, “what did Leo tell you about us?”

“Just… that you were a vigilante group, but not a criminal one,” I said.

“Technically vigilantes are criminals, but whatever,” Donatello said. “Continue.”

“He told me about how you liked to work with technology and how Raphael was undisciplined and Mike was too laid back.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah. Well, there were stories, sometimes, like how you killed the Shredder. He didn’t tell me about you unless he was teaching me something.”

“Did he say anything about Splinter?”

“Not much.” I looked down. “He didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Figures.” Don looked out the window. I suddenly realized that I didn’t know anything about him, not really. Dad had given me a caricature of Donatello: his long-winded rants, his obsession with details to the detriment of the whole, his skill with tech and the sciences. But when he was sitting in front of me I felt like those details were more like a grocery list than a person.

“I don’t know how to help him,” Don said at last. “For me, for Mike, we know what we want out of life. We know what to do with ourselves. We are… more or less satisfied. But Leo… he doesn’t have any definition unless he’s fighting something. If he can’t find an enemy, he’s got to make one. Do you know what I mean?”

“No,” I said slowly. “Not really.”

Donatello chewed thoughtfully. “Well… let’s just say that Leo doesn’t know how to relax. He should’ve been resting these past days and what does he do? Go straight to work. He’s going to kill himself.”

“So… why did you mention Splinter, then?”

“Splinter died during Leo’s rebellious phase.” Donatello stabbed his food and shunted it through the syrup. “Naturally, Leo took it hard, but not exactly in the ways we expected. He started running with the Foot.” Donatello shook his head and laughed. “He’d killed Shredder twice and he joined the goddamn Foot.”

“Wait,” I said. “He was actually _in_ the Foot?”

“Oh, yeah, he was,” Donatello said. “He actually wore the insignia. I could definitely tag a few important assassinations on him. I guess we should’ve seen it coming. Leo copes with trauma by working. Mike and I had Internet-based careers and the family, but all Leo could do well was _ninjitsu,_ and—to put it nicely—there’s only one organization in NYC that hires for that. It’s rather difficult to see a paragon of virtue flip over like that, and so fast.”

“He never said he joined the Foot.” I was clenching my hands together so hard that my knuckles hurt.

“Interesting.” Donatello turned his fork over. “Well. Everyone makes mistakes; happens to the best of us. Sometimes we murder judges or a politician or two…”

I shook my head. “Maybe this was a mistake. We can’t kill Mom.”

“Oh, we can,” Don said. “It’s just a matter of preparation.”

“But Dad isn’t getting over Mom. He’s trying, but he can’t.”

“He’s doing it the wrong way, whatever he’s doing,” said Don. “Look, I’m not exactly stellar at this entire relationship business, but I don’t think that a healthy coping mechanism includes trying to erase an entire experience from your life.”

“I don’t think so either,” I said.

Mike walked through the door, rubbing the back of his head. “Hey guys.”

“How’d it go?” Donatello asked.

“Pretty well, actually.” Mike dropped down at the table and laid his head in his arms. “He’s got some good points, you know? Sure, we can take practice more seriously, no problem. But he agreed that we have to work as equals and he’s going to watch his language. Also… I just got him to promise to rest for a week. No work, no katas, just light walking.”

“You’re kidding!” I said.

“We’re going to have to remind him,” said Mike. “If you see him doing anything responsible and serious, you’ve got to throw books at him until he sits down. Make sure that you aim at his right side.”

Don wrapped his arm around Mike’s neck and laughed. “My god, Mike. Where is he?”

“I left him by the stream. He just needs to think.”

“He’s going to be okay?” I asked.

“Yeah. He’s just exhausted and keeps reopening his wounds. That’ll make anybody cranky, you know?”

I clenched the edge of the table and stood straight up. “Don, Mike,” I said, “do you think we could just stay here and forget about killing Mom? I could help with the chores, like mowing the lawn, and I could learn how to cook, and you could show me all about… technology and mathematics and writing and painting, or whatever. We could keep on training just in case the Foot finds us. I could watch Shadow’s TV and learn from her schoolbooks—maybe we could even have school together. Then Dad doesn’t have to worry about killing Mom. If Raphael came by, Dad and I could… could hide. And if that didn’t work, we could talk to him… I mean, maybe you could soften him up for us…” I shook my head. “I’m sorry. This is stupid.”

Mike’s eyes glittered. He squeezed my hand. “No, not at all. I like that idea fine.”

Donatello’s smile was slow and his eyes disappeared into crow’s feet. “Ah, Saya, I wouldn’t mind at all. We’ve hidden away from the world our entire lives. What’s a little more hide and seek, eh? We could talk it over with our human friends and see what they’d prefer.”

“We could?”

“This is a democracy,” Donatello said.

“So you wouldn’t mind… not going on the mission?”

Donatello’s smile was suddenly sinister. “Haha, well. I won’t lie. A little old-school action appeals terribly much to me. I’m ten times the techie I was as a kid, and I’m dying to use it against the Foot. Dying.” He rubbed his hands together. “Ah! Which reminds me. Wait here.”

He flung the trapdoor open and slid inside.

“Well, I’m not interested in going!” Mike shouted down. “Like, at all!”

“I don’t care,” Donatello shouted back.

When Donatello slid out again, he threw a bundle at my feet. My eyes bulged and I dropped to my knees beside it, then flung off the wrappings. There, hilts discolored but otherwise unharmed, were Mom’s katana. I gingerly drew one of the blades. They’d been maintained.

“How did you do this?” I asked, turning the sword over in my hands. “How?”

“It just so happens that Casey threw something important of mine in the pond a while back, so I cobbled together a small remote-controlled sub. All it took was luck, sensors, and some really big magnets,” Don said. “I recommend hiding them from Leo, though.”

“But how did you…”

“I saw the whole thing. I live in the barn, you know, and I have microphones everywhere. What can I say? Finding a good pair of katana is almost impossible in our circumstances, and you’ll need something to fight with someday. Those aren’t cheap weapons. Probably cost around $20,000 to commission, maybe more.”

Mike whistled. “You can keep those in my attic if you want,” he said. “I have a million hiding places up there.”

I clenched the katana to my breast. My insides were twisting. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

“C’mon,” Mike said. “Let’s hide them before Leo comes back.”

I didn’t walk up the stairs; I floated. Sunlight fell on me from the end of the hall in a dazzling ray.

**

That night, Shadow had to do schoolwork. She put on her noise-canceling headphones and leaned over her textbooks with a highlighter. I was crouched against the wall watching _The Goonies_ , a bowl of popcorn on my knees. Dad stepped into the doorway. I didn’t look at him.

“Saya,” he said softly. “Come here.”

“Can’t it wait?” I asked.

“No. Come to the room, please.”

Shadow made a face at me from her desk as Dad turned away. “I’ll hold it for you,” she said.

This smiling business was getting easier.

As I stepped into the room, I glanced at Dad’s face. His expression was unreadable.

“What is it?” I asked, shutting the door behind me.

He sank down on the bed. He looked far more tired than I had ever seen him. “Don and Mike told me what you said about… changing plans.”

“Yeah,” I said, slowly. “I want to stay.”

“We’re very close to the NYC Foot here.”

“They don’t know where we are,” I said. “We’re safe. The trees hide us and we’re out of the way, and if we need goods from the outside world, the humans can help us. Nobody will ever know.”

He tapped his index fingers together. “It’s only a matter of time before they find us. Raphael is only one of several possible weak points. All it takes is one slip-up—a photo, a video, a story posted on the Internet—and if the Foot are running bots that use facial recognition software, they’ll have us. Remember how we were caught in Texas. There could be curious neighbors, commuters, travelers… the house is far more visible in the winter…”

“Dad!” I snapped. “Everyone isn’t out to get us!”

“Of course not!” he said. “I just want to be cautious.”

“No!” I said. “I’m sick and tired of being scared. I don’t want to live like a dog out of the trash can and I don’t want to walk all the time and I don’t want to kill anyone anymore!”

He clenched his hands on his knees. “So you’ve made your decision?”

“Yes! I’m staying here. You can’t make me go anywhere I don’t want to.”

“Of course I won’t!” he said. “Lower your voice!”

“No!” I balled my hands into fists. “You made us run all over the country for no reason when there was a safe place here the entire time!”

“I couldn’t lead the Foot here!”

“You _are_ the Foot!” I said. “When were you going to tell me about that, huh?”

He sat back, shoulders rigid. “I have never, ever been part of the Foot.” His fists started quivering. “I selected the missions that best reflected our code of honor.”

“What about the private missions?” I asked. “The assassinations?”

There was a catch in his voice. “Who told you that?”

“Someone,” I said, lifting my chin.

“I made some mistakes,” he said, carefully enunciating each word. “Mistakes which I will not live down. But I recognize that they were... I was wrong.”

“You killed them for Mom, didn’t you,” I said. “Some people get flowers, but ohhh, not you. You cut someone’s head off. Did she put them on the mantel?”

He rose to his feet, very slowly, very deliberately, every single muscle tense and straining. I shrank down, folding up like a pocketknife. I was an idiot. I was an idiot. I was a goddamn idiot!

“Get out,” he said.

I darted out of the door, but not fast enough: when he slammed it, it bit my heel, and I tumbled into Shadow’s room.

Shadow was dragging a futon out of her closet. T-shirts rolled off of it in bundles.

“You wanna sleep in here tonight?” she asked, slinging it down beside her bed. “We can have a _Doctor Who_ marathon.”

I nodded, fighting down a lump in my throat.

“Are you going to be okay?” she asked. She gingerly set her fingertips on my shoulder.

I leaned into her side, and she wrapped an arm around my shoulders.

“It’s gonna be okay,” she said. “It’s always hard in the beginning, that’s all.”

“I hate him,” I said. “I hate him.”

She didn’t reply. She just squeezed my shoulders and reached for the remote.


	7. Chapter 7

The next morning at eight, Mike marched from room to room, banging a spoon on a skillet.

“Hear ye, hear ye!” he said, barging into Shadow’s room and tripping over a pile of DVD cases. “You are hereby invited to a round table of the greatest import!”

“Geddout,” Shadow moaned into her pillow.

He popped her on the back of the head with the spoon. “Up, I say!”

“Mike!” Shadow howled, slinging a fist back at him. “Get out of my room!”

Mike dodged, stumbled on the DVD cases, hooked a foot around his ankle, and crashed to the floor. Shadow’s mouth fell open and she rolled out of bed, dropping at Mike’s side. I flattened myself against the wall, blinking sleep out of my eyes.

“Oh my god,” she said. “Mike, are you okay?”

He coughed dramatically. “Do you know what we do to the people who kill messengers?”

“God! Get out!”

“I think I’m mortally wounded,” Mike said. “You’ll have to help me down to the kitchen.”

Groaning, Shadow helped him up. He threw an arm around her neck and dragged her into the hall. All I could hear for a few minutes was her earnest swearing.

“You coming, burrito?” Mike asked from the stairs.

I pushed my sheet off and stumbled after them.

When we entered the kitchen, I stopped at the entrance. Don and April were sitting in front of the whiteboard, Dad at the head of the table. I don’t think he had slept at all. There were circles under his eyes. Avoiding his gaze, I squeezed between Mike and Shadow and kept my head low. The minute Shadow hit the chair, she dropped her arms on the table and sank between her elbows. The only sign that she was conscious was the faint flutter of her eyelids.

“Tell me when it’s over,” she groaned.

“I’m sorry to wake everyone up so early,” Dad said, “but we need a contingency plan. I think it’s inevitable that the Foot finds us. Raphael is still out there, and eventually he’ll think to come here.”

“But Raph would never turn us in,” April said.

“Perhaps not willingly.” Dad’s expression darkened. “Let’s consider the idea that we are surrounded and that ninja come through the trees.” He slapped a crude map onto the table. “Don’s tunnels are going to be our ideal escape routes because each tunnel releases you into the trees from inconspicuous exits. April and Don will take the north exit; Shadow and Mike, the south; Saya, you take this one with me, to the east. There are locked grates at the ends of these tunnels—we’ll get everyone the necessary keys. In case of danger, I recommend lying down in the brush until everything dies down—it will be hard to see you through the undergrowth unless you’re moving.  We’ll go through some drills to make sure everyone has it. Don and Mike will escort our human friends to Northampton proper. Saya and I will try to draw their attention.”

“What if they make it to the kitchen before we do?” Mike asked.

Dad shook his head. “Then we’ll be forced to fight our way to the trapdoor. It’s preferable to running out of the front and back entrances. The hope was that we could know they were coming with enough time to spare. I’m confident in Don’s security system since it is… ah… overboard.”

Donatello snorted into his coffee.

“It picked up earthworms,” Dad said.

Donatello waggled a finger. “Ah, but it can isolate weights and vibrations of particular note, particularly those unique to human weight and speech…”

“Earthworms in the adjacent property,” Dad said.

“And did it alert us? No. You’re allowed to be anal about your pursuits, and I’m allowed to be anal about mine.”

Dad lifted his hands in surrender. “In any case, everyone is going to carry a phone at all times, and we’ll start keeping watch. Donatello has programmed a custom app that’s tied into the security system, which will instantly warn us about possible intruders.”

“But I don’t have a phone,” I said.

“We’ve ordered a couple,” Dad said.

Elation welled up in my chest and I hugged my knees.

“What’ll we do when Casey comes back?” Mike asked.

“We don’t know exactly when he’ll show up,” April said. “He almost never calls ahead. All I know is that he’s probably coming back in June.”

“Then we should pretend he’s coming back tomorrow,” Dad said. “How are we going to dispose of the car? The evidence that we have been living here?”

“We shouldn’t dispose of anything!” April said. “Lying would be the worst thing we could do. I’ll break the news to Casey. He’ll take it.”

“I’ll make him take it,” grumbled Shadow.

“Sounds good,” Dad said, “but what if Raph comes back?”

“Way ahead of you,” said Donatello, leaning back in his chair. “I’m repairing the car as we speak, and I’m going to give it a new coat of paint and forge some valid registration stickers and plates. We’ve needed a new vehicle, so we’ll just tell him we bought it for a song.”

I thought of Texas, the driver belching blood on the gravel. The memories felt like the observations of a ghost that had shared my body. I shuddered.

“As for your living here,” Don said, “just make sure you don’t leave any personal items in your room. I can hide some of your stuff in my barn, and Mike can hide the rest in his attic. Any books, Shadow can keep in her bookcase. So on and so forth. Spread it out.”

“Oh, that’s gonna last how long?” Shadow muttered. “You’re gonna relax and forget about it.”

“We’ll do our best,” Dad said. “By the way, Shadow, April—Don tells me that you were training with him for a few months. Would you like to pick up where you left off?”

Shadow frowned; April shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Dad said, “but I invite both of you to join us in the mornings.”

“I don’t want to kill anyone,” Shadow said.

“You don’t have to,” Dad said. “You just have to knock them down long enough to get away.”

“All right,” she said, burying her face into her arms. “But not this morning.”

“Very well,” Dad said. I saw the flicker of disapproval in his face. “With that in mind, I want to bring up… the newest concern. We initially planned on going to New York City to assassinate Karai.”

The room grew very still.

“Saya does not want to anymore,” Dad said. “She wants to stay here with the family.”

Shadow’s hand slipped down to mine and gave it a squeeze.

“I thought we should put it to a vote,” Dad said. “Please keep in mind that whether we kill Karai or not, the result is the same: the Foot may find us and some of us may pay with our lives. There is a chance, however small, that if we were to kill Karai without being detected, our case would be reviewed by a Foot committee and dropped. That is why I recommend that we continue reconnaissance and training: in case we change our minds, and in case the Foot push us into future action.”

“You forgot to mention what would happen if we kill Karai and the Foot finds out,” said Donatello. “‘Clusterfuck’ would not even begin to describe how screwed we’d be. Right now we’re on the target list, sure, but we aren’t an urgent concern, and killing us is optional. Hell—all they did in New York was use legal skullduggery to punish Casey and April.”

April scowled. “I think I see where you’re going with this. If you kill their NYC leader for the third time…”

“We’d push ourselves up to Target Number One,” Donatello said. “No more Mr. Nice Foot. Everyone involved with us would become a valid target, even Saya.”

Dad nodded curtly. “We can put off this vote until the evening if anyone needs time to think.” His eyes settled on me. I couldn’t look.

“I think I’m ready, bro,” Mike said.

There were nods around the table.

“All who would like to stay?” Dad said.

Everyone’s hands went up but his.

**

Dad was gone that morning, and for many mornings afterward. He kept his word to the best of our knowledge. He did not join us for katas. He left early, before anyone else woke up, and the only sign that he existed was the carefully scrubbed bowls and plates in the dish drainer. April joked about being haunted, and left notes out asking the Ghost to please stop in for dinner sometime. We think he was going for long walks around the property.

“Don’t worry about it,” Donatello said. “He needs his alone time.”

Each morning, my alarm screamed in my ear: 5 AM! 5 AM! 5 AM! I rolled out of bed and dragged myself down the hall to check on Mike and Shadow. Donatello was always waiting for us in the living room, idly pushing décor around with his bo.

At first there was stretching and cardio, then katas, then items of special focus.

“As your temporary dictator,” said Donatello to us, “I hereby command you to find three things you want to improve at, and then work on them."

"What if there are more than three?" Mike asked.

"Then I'm sorry. You'll probably die."

"Thanks."

Mike and Shadow practiced nothing but stances and simple katas for a while. I went through all of my basics, and Mike was usually my partner for throws and grappling.

Donatello made up for all of our pathetic posturing. If I had to practice throws with him, he wouldn’t go down for nothing; he’d knock me down first, show me where I had gone wrong with a paragraph of exposition, then knock me down again. When it was time for our special training—Shadow with some new kata, me with throwing knives, shuriken, and the _bokken_ , Mike slowly readjusting to his _nunchaku_ —Donatello wowed us with lightning-fast staff work. Jabbing, stabbing, whirling that bo until it was nothing but a blur, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, the very image of martial arts. He always finished by standing back and wiping the sweat off of his forehead with a dramatic flourish.

“Damn, Don, don’t give yourself a heart attack,” Mike said from where he was lying in the grass.

One Monday morning, two weeks after he had first disappeared, I woke up to see Dad sitting on the edge of his bed, polishing his katana. I didn’t say a word, and he didn’t look at me. I threw on my clothes and pattered downstairs.

He joined us at breakfast without comment, walked out with us without comment, and practiced with us without comment. He only touched me once, and that was to correct my posture. When he raised his left arm, I could see that the wounds had healed over nicely. I could also see that they’d left some nasty scars.

In a couple of weeks, Dad was almost as good as new, and in a couple of months, both of us had filled out. I actually had a stomach and a body shape for once, and was pleased to see the curve of muscles in my arms. Mike stuck to his diet, more or less, and very, very slowly began to grow leaner. One day during freeform sparring, I actually knocked Donatello down. He chased me into the trees for it.

When we weren’t practicing, we finished chores; and after chores, we played. Mike loaned me books and appointed me Official Second Pre-Reader, after Shadow. He wrote Young Adult novels, usually sci-fi and fantasy—his bestselling series followed a time traveler to feudal Japan. When the afternoons were nice, he would troop out to the clearing with one of two tools: his laptop with a solar-powered charger, or an easel and an art box full of acrylic paint and brushes. Sometimes I was by his side in an oversized apron, a bag of markers, and a pad of paper. With slow, stumbling strokes, I scrawled the endlessly forking branches of trees.

Donatello showed me all of the remote-controlled robots he had built, not one of which was sensible. We spent an entire day shooting foam pellets at each other with his miniature tanks. Another day, he let me fly a model helicopter into Shadow’s room and dump a load of acorns on her. After a great deal of begging on my part, he showed me how to pilot his small submersible. Watching it zoom around the pond, stirring up a frothing wake, I felt I liked it best. Knowing it had returned Mom’s swords made it something of an ally.

Shadow introduced me to the Internet at large, video games, and a host of movies and shows. I couldn’t stay on the computer terribly long—Shadow would get antsy and kick me off—and although I soon had a sleek phone of my own, it didn’t come with much of a data plan. (“Emergencies only,” Dad had said.) I made do by playing with her game consoles. For a long time, I could only play 2D games; the 3D boggled me and I kept second-guessing my character's position in-game. If I wasn’t hugging walls from my sheer terror of ledges, I was fleeing madly from the monsters. Direction was all I really seemed to get. Shadow laughed over my shoulder and told me to face the creatures head on. I responded by accidentally leaping off of a cliff to my death.

April was mostly a silent figure in the house—silent and closed off. She was usually working at the computer, her thumb thrust up beneath her teeth; in the evenings, she took walks by herself with a camera around her neck. Once a week she would go shopping and return with a trunk crammed with goods, usually with at least one new t-shirt or pair of pants for me. One afternoon, I asked her what she liked to do for fun. She smiled.

“Reading, photography, and documentaries, mostly!” she said. “And some online chess.”

On my own time, I spent several afternoons just exploring the property, learning where the stream was, the little animal paths, the blueberry bushes. I searched for the inconspicuous exits that Dad had told us about. I didn’t find them. Instead, I lost myself in the flickering golden light beneath the branches, clambering over broken stones and gnarled roots, slipping through brush and bramble, serenaded by songbirds. At least once a day, I went up to the attic to take Mom's katana out of their sheaths and wipe them down. Their maintenance was an act like worship. The steel was gorgeous, rippling colors of silver and white. I practiced with them quietly, by myself. Holding them gave me a thrill I could not define.

As for Dad, he rarely spoke, and after katas would disappear into the trees with a book under his arm. I only saw him in the mornings for breakfast, and in the evenings for dinner and bedtime. Sometimes I marveled at him quietly; how funny that mere weeks before, I had thought of him as a colossus?

**

One afternoon in June, I was out with Mike in the shadows of a tree. A thunderhead was thrusting itself toward the moon, and the air was thick, heavy, and still. Mike was painting the pond again, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. I had perched on a branch above him to read through _The Chronicles of Narnia_ , a chilled glass clinking in my hand. Halfway through Chapter Three in _The Magician’s Nephew_ , I ran out of lemonade. Groaning, I jumped down.

“Where are you going?” Mike asked.

I lifted my glass.

“Ahh,” he said, smacking his lips. “Bring me some, will you?”

I had just entered the kitchen and opened the refrigerator when I heard the gate at the head of the drive squeaking open.

April dashed into the living room and threw the front door open. “Oh my god,” she said. “Casey’s back. Saya, can you go to your room for a minute?”

I nodded. Filling a glass with lemonade, book under my arm, I stomped up the stairs. Just as I was about to hide in our room, I hesitated, and looked to my right. There was April’s room, and the door was cracked open. So was her window—the window that looked over the drive.

Silent as a ghost, I slipped into her room. It was a plain place, perfumed faintly with vanilla, with a few lovingly framed pictures of the stream and deer paths. Banged-up furniture, a patched off-white bedspread, and yellowed curtains glowed faintly in the summer sunlight. I dropped down to my knees beside the open window. From my vantage point, I could see the reflection of the drive and parts of the road in the window glass.

An old truck with a camper rocked down the drive, both its windows rolled down, its windshield blazing white with the glare. It groaned to a stop in front of the house. Huffing, a muscle-bound goliath drenched with sweat dropped onto the drive. I thought of Raphael the minute I saw him—he had big meaty arms, a chiseled jaw, a six o’clock shadow. April plunged out and threw her arms around him, and he gave her a ridiculously oversized kiss on the temple.

“The AC went out on this hunka junk!” he said, smothering her in a big nasty sweaty hug. “I hope you don’t mind smelling like an armpit.”

“I’m just glad you’re back. Why can’t you call like normal people?” She punched him in the shoulder.

“I’m not no normal people.”

“Grammar, Casey Jones!”

He groaned. “Shut up, you,” he said, and kissed her.

Eyes rolling, I was just about to sneak back to my room when the passenger door swung open. A cane stabbed into the earth, and Raphael limped out.

I shrank down against the floor, heart thudding, glancing back at the open door. Shadow’s room lay just at the end of the hall. Hugging my glass and my book against my chest, I doubled over and raced for it. My hand dropped on the doorknob and I twisted.

It was locked.

“Oh!” April said. I could hear the note of panic in her voice.

“Yeah, I’m glad to see you too,” Raphael said.

“It’s not that!” April said. “What happened to you?”

I beat on the door. “Shadow!” I hissed.

Outside, Mike shouted a greeting. I instinctively flattened against the floor. One of the ice cubes drifted away from its brethren and clinked loudly against the glass; I bit my lip.

“Hey, long time no see!” Mike said. “What’s up?”

“Mike, brother! Looking good!” Casey said. “Phew, you stink.”

“And you don’t, bro?” Mike said. “Ahhh, Raph. How are you, man?”

Raph grunted. “Been better.”

“I can see that. How’d that happen?”

“Leo.” Raph spat. “I’m on leave.”

Mike whistled. “Sorry, man.”

“Sorry ain’t the half of it.”

“Don’t pay attention to Raphael,” said Casey. “He starts whining the second he can’t punch someone to death.”

“Well, you know what I always say,” April said. “If there’s one thing that’ll heal all wounds, it’s R&R on the farm.”

I thought of Dad and swore under my breath. I renewed my beating of the door. I couldn’t hear the TV, so I figured that Shadow had her headphones on.

“I gotta keep the weight off of my knee for _at least_ another four months,” Raph said. “Goddamn it.”

Mike laughed. “Hey, it’s no problem, man. We’ve got a new easy chair in the den, and it’s got your name on it. Need help?”

“No,” Raph said. He was limping over the drive. I knew because I could hear the gravel crunching at uneven intervals.

“Well, all right, Mr. Sunshine.” Mike pounded up the stairs—it had to be Mike, nobody else was that enthusiastic—and held the screen door open. I heard feet tramping through the door, the squeak of the floorboards, the door clapping shut, the salty, sharp tang of new people. Swallowing, I fled to our room. I saw a flash of Donatello in the kitchen—our eyes met with a fretful glance—and then I quietly shut the door. I thought of the whiteboard in the kitchen and stiffened: they had written our names on it.

“Hey, Don!” said Casey. “Don, my car’s AC is shot. If you don’t take care of it, I swear to god, I’m kicking you out. Uh… what are you doing?”

“Cleaning. What does it look like? Ah, Raphael. I didn’t think I’d see you back here.”

“Yeah,” Raphael said. There was a soft note to his voice that I didn’t like. “Weird thing to clean there, Don.”

“Weird? What’s weird?”

“The bottom of the whiteboard, there. We got visitors?”

“Yeah, two hose-brains who are going to do all the lawn work.”

“Hey, look at me. You think I’m gonna be doing any lawn work?” A crack on the linoleum—the hard tip of a cane?

“Calm down, Rambo,” Casey said. “Go sit down and I’ll find you something to drink.”

“Raph,” April said, “let me help you. Come on, sit down.”

“No. I’ve been sitting for five hours. I feel like stretching my legs.” A clumping sound toward the stairs.

“Oh, Raph, your room is definitely not ready,” April said.

“Oh, it isn’t?” he asked. “Why’s that?”

_Shit._

“Man, Raph, what’s wrong with you?” Casey asked. “I thought you’d be happy to come back.”

“Something’s wrong,” Raphael said. “They’re hiding something. Or _someone_.”

“Can it. Paranoia doesn’t suit you,” Donatello said. “Sit down. I was just about to make dinner.”

“Not hungry.” A thump on the bottom stair.

I glanced wildly from side to side. I set my glass and book on the nightstand, then grabbed Dad’s backpack from beside the bed. I peeked outside the window, looked down at the ground—but quickly nixed the idea of dropping it outside. I could hear voices from all over the house; what made me think that a backpack hitting the ground would be any better? So I stuffed it into the closet, my arm wrapped across the zipper pulls so they didn’t clink, and gently set it against the wall behind a pile of folded quilts. I thrust our books behind a couple of shoeboxes on the top shelf. Then my eyes lit on the clothes hanging on the rod and my heart beat in overtime. Raph’s leather jacket hung right there, and on the floor were his boots.

The thumping had reached the top of the stairs.

“Bro, come on,” Mike said. “We’re not gonna put you on the second floor anyway. Not with your knee like that.”

“I just want to check on something,” Raphael said.

“You can check on things later,” April said. “Come back down, please.”

“Raph, for god’s sake,” Casey said. “Calm the hell down. We’re home now!”

“Don’t tell me to calm down,” Raphael snapped. “If you guys got Leo up here, I’m going to be pissed.”

“Leo?” Mike said. “We haven’t seen Leo in years. What makes you think he’d come back here?”

“You are the worst fucking liar,” Raph said.

“Bro! Language!”

“I’m going to the barn,” Donatello said icily. “When you’re done with this puerile nonsense, let me know.”

The trapdoor slammed.

“Can someone translate that for me?” Casey asked.

I had rolled up the jacket and boots and stuffed them under the bed, pinning them behind one of the rolling plastic bins that April used for storage. Very, very quietly, I shut the closet door.

The thumping hesitated at the door, and I saw the doorknob turn. I grabbed my glass, swept across the floor, and dropped out of the window.

I didn’t drop all of the way to the lawn; there were big windows down there, and Casey would see me for sure. Instead, I dug my fingers and toes into the clapboard, then stared helplessly at my huge glass of lemonade, and at the climb that would take two hands. I heard our door creak open.

“Hey,” Raphael said. “April, who’s been drinking in this room?”

“No one, Raph.”

“There’s a ring here on the nightstand, and it’s still wet.”

“Might’ve been Shadow.”

“Really?” Raph said. He hobbled to the closet and flung the doors open.

The possibilities rushed through my head: drop the glass, risk Casey seeing it from the huge windows on the front porch; try to hold the heavy, slippery glass in some way while I crawled across the side of the house (impossible); hang on the wall holding the glass and pray to god that Raphael wouldn’t look out of the window, a thing he would most certainly do.

Taking a deep breath, I chucked the glass as hard as I could across the lawn. It bounced on a tussock with a loud clink. Lemonade splashed across the greenery and ice glittered everywhere. I frightened a few pale yellow butterflies, who fluttered dumbly in zigzags.

“What was that?” Casey asked. I heard heavy boots striding across the ground floor toward the porch.

“What?” Raph said.

_Shit!_

I booked it across the wall, aiming for the roof. I hadn’t climbed in a while and I made more noise than I meant to; Raph’s footsteps quickened, he staggered, the floorboards groaned, and just before he elbowed his way between the curtains I swung up onto the roof. I squashed myself behind a gable, clapping a hand over my mouth, trying not to breathe too loudly. The tiles practically sizzled against my feet, but I didn’t move, not an inch.

Casey was trotting across the lawn, April and Mike in pursuit. I couldn’t move. If I didn’t go over the roof, Casey would see me when he turned around. But the minute I moved out from behind the gable, Raphael would see me from the window.

“What’d you see?” Mike asked.

“You guys are ridiculous,” April said. “You know how Shadow is.”

“Why the hell would Shadow throw something out of her window?” Casey asked. He bent down and when he rose again, it was with my glass in his hand.

_Shit shit shit._

“What happened?” Raphael shouted.

Casey turned and raised the glass, and just before he could say anything he saw me.

“Who the fuck is that?” he said.

I leaped up over the roof. Raphael howled from below.

“It’s her!” he said. “They _are_ here!”

I slid down the roof on the other side, dropped onto the porch awning, and took a running leap off onto the lawn. I sprinted into the dim green light between the trees, heart in my mouth, the backs of my legs scraped bloody by the hot shingles. Oh my god, I ran, I ran until sweat poured into my eyes and the forest lashed me as red as a cooked lobster. I fell so many times I lost count, so many times that my arms hurt all the way up to my shoulders. It seemed like an eternity before I heard the stream’s musical burbling.

I ducked beneath a stone shelf near the water and huddled there, arms wrapped around my knees, heart pounding. I heard Mike shouting my name from far away, but I didn’t move. I cursed myself for my stupid escape plan. But like Dad was fond of saying: the past is the past. What to do now? Run? Run off into the trees as far as I could? Leave Northampton?

Leave Northampton.

“No,” I said to myself. “No.”

My heartbeat slowed, my hard breathing subsided, and I dug my nails into my knees. I damned Dad in my head: of course Raphael had come back, of course he had. He was going to ruin everything. I raised my head and scowled across the stream. Fronds bobbed gently in the rain-scented breeze; the wind whispered through the crowns of the trees. A willow nodded its great dipped head and the strands of its mane sang softly.

“You’re not taking this from me,” I said.

It was slowly that I walked back to the farmhouse, tracing my nerveless fingers on the trees, bruising the ferns beneath my feet. I reached the treeline about the same time that the sun disappeared beneath the horizon. For a while, I stood motionless in the darkness, staring up at the porch, fireflies flickering around me in the gloom. All of the lights in the house were on, and Mike was sitting on the porch swing, chin on his chest. The camper was a black silhouette, massive, portentous. Like a bull with its head lowered.

I stood very tall, threw my shoulders back, and marched out of the forest.

Mike looked up, and a smile broke across his face. “Saya!” he said.

A rapid set of thuds from the kitchen, and Raphael burst out of the door, a great light-limned shadow. He radiated anger so intense that I could feel it, the same way you feel fog on your skin.

“I knew it,” he said. “I fucking knew it!”

“Bro,” Mike said softly, “leave her alone.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Dude, this isn’t a request. Leave her alone.”

I stalked up the stairs and thrust my chest out.

“So, giving yourself up?” Raphael said. “We coulda done this a long time ago, and nobody woulda got hurt.”

“No,” I said, and set my feet at shoulder’s width. “I’m staying right here.”

His eyes narrowed. “I don’t think so. This is the last bit of heaven we’ve got left. Like hell am I leading the Foot to it.”

I started to laugh. “Oh my god!”

His hand tightened on the hook of his cane. “What’s so funny?”

“Just try and catch me,” I said, setting a foot on the first step. “How fast are you with that cane, grandpa?”

“You wanna say that again?”

“Hey!” Mike threw his arms between us. “Stop. Just stop. This isn’t going to achieve anything.”

“I’m not going anywhere!” I said.

“You don’t have to!” Mike said.

“If we don’t get rid of her, you know what’ll happen!” Raphael snapped.

“Dude, with all due respect, fuck you,” Mike said. “You don’t ‘get rid’ of family, you get me?”

“She stabbed me in the knee.”

“And you tried to stab Leo in the goddamn heart,” Mike said. “He nearly fucking died.”

“Good!”

My face blazed.

“Good?” Mike said. “Oh my god. You gave him shit about being the Foot’s lapdog, but he never came home and knifed one of _us_.”

“He didn’t?” Raphael said softly.

“Oh, goddamn it, Raph. That was so clearly an accident.”

“You and I both know how much they were fighting near the end. And if anyone knows how to arrange a murder, it’s Leo.”

“Yeah, and you and I both know that Leo would never go that far,” Mike said. “Give it a rest.”

“Wait!” I said. “What are you talking abou—”

“Nothing,” Mike snapped. “And don’t you even think about it, Raphael.”

Raphael took a deep breath and dropped his head. “Fine. I am too tired to deal with this.”

“Good,” Mike said. “Go lie down. This is also not a suggestion.”

“Casey will want her out too,” Raphael hissed.

“I’m not leaving,” I snapped. “More people are on my side than they are on yours, and this is a democracy.”

“We’ll see,” Raph said. “But remember. I know where you are.” He limped into the house.

Mike drew me into a hug. It was only then that I realized how hard I was shivering.

**

Casey was hunched over at the dinner table, glowering, a mug of beer in his hand. His eyes leveled on me as I stepped inside. Mike stood behind me with his hands on my shoulders.

“God, Casey,” Mike said. “I hope you’re calmer than Raph.”

“I’m about to be,” Casey said, lighting a cigarette.

“Okay, look, yeah, this is hard to take, but I promise that they’re here for a good reason.”

I glanced over my shoulder at Mike, frowning.

“I don’t want Leo anywhere near my family,” Casey said. “The kid’s even more trouble than he is. Just… get them off my land.”

My heart sank. “Please,” I said. “Don’t make me go.”

Casey’s face softened a little. “Aw, goddamn.”

“I really like this place,” I said quietly. “I’ve actually been happy here.”

Casey groaned. “No, kid, you’ve got to go. You’ve really got to go.”

“I’m gonna help around the house.” I stepped up to the table and looked him earnestly in the face. “I’ll mow the lawn.”

The corner of Casey’s mouth turned up. “What, so we can see the Foot creepin’ across it better?”

“I can protect the family,” I said. “I can kill anybody who tries to hurt us.”

Silence. Casey leaned back in his chair, expression hardening.

“Uh, too much information there, Saya,” Mike said.

“Chip offa the old block, huh,” Casey said, taking a long drink.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“Oh-kay!” Mike said, grabbing me by the shoulders. “Up to your room, Saya, dear friend.” He started pushing me through the kitchen.

“I’m talking about protection and self-defense!” I said. “Not killing people for fun!”

“Not a good time!” Mike said, pushing me up the stairs.

“But Mike, I’m not trying to…”

“I know, I know. You’re fine. You’re okay. Don’t worry about it.”

“But…”

April pushed past us, smiling in a strained way. I couldn’t look her in the face: there was something in her expression that begged for privacy. Before we reached the landing, Shadow galloped past us and nearly pushed us over the banister.

“Excuse me, sorry!” she said, and skidded into the kitchen. “Dad! I’m sooo sorry, I had my headphones on, I had no idea that you were back!”

“Shadow! Hey! Com’ere, baby.”

Laughter wafted up to us from the kitchen. We stood in the darkness for a couple of seconds. Then Mike pushed me into my room and shut the door.

 “Don’t talk about killing people in front of Case,” he said. “He’s not gonna see you when you talk. He’s gonna see Leo. And whatever Raph believes, you can bet your buttons that Case believes, and, uh, vice versa. They’re like… the amazing two-headed beatdown machine.”

“What if he kicks me out?” I whispered.

“Then we will go,” Dad said.

We both whirled around. Dad was sitting on his bed in front of the open window. His eyes glinted in the light from the hallway.

“My god!” Mike said. “I will never get used to your sneaky teleportation tricks.”

Dad cracked a smile.

“Oh, I see how it is,” Mike said. “Feeling joy at my terror.”

“All I did was come through the window.” Dad rose and patted Mike on the shoulder. “Thank you for all of your kind words, by the way. You’ve done nothing but good for us.”

“Aw, Leo, don’t talk like that,” Mike said. “It sounds like you’re saying good-bye.”

“It is,” Dad said.

My mouth fell open. “I’m not going with you!”

“Yes, you are.”

“Ohhh, no, you are _not_ ,” Mike said. “We’re gonna talk this over. We’re gonna work this out.”

“What’s Casey’s is Raph’s, Mike. I’m out.” Dad looked at me. “We’re out.”

I shook my head. “Leave me out of this!”

“Oh, for god’s sake!” Mike said. “You can’t keep running out when the going gets bad, man!”

Dad shook his head. “This isn’t ‘running out.’ I am preventing a bigger blow-up and I am protecting the rest of you.”

“No, you’re running away,” Mike said. “Jump into a fight, ten to one? You’ve got it. Deal with the family? Poof! Gone. If you can’t kill it you don’t know what to do with it.”

“Raphael won’t forgive me,” Dad snapped. “You know he won’t.”

“Leo, you’re not even trying! You can’t just piss people off and then disappear! That’s not damage control.”

“Then what is it that you suggest that we do?” Dad asked sharply.

“We’ve gotta put this shit to bed. God almighty! You gotta know how much I hate seeing everybody angry.” Mike brushed my hair back with an idle hand, puffing out his cheeks. “Maybe this won’t mean anything to you, bro, but I’ve missed you something terrible. It was awful wondering if you were alive or dead, not to mention what was going on with little burrito. I know her health wasn’t great in the beginning and…” A pause, then he glared at Dad under knotted brows. “Look here, don’t ever leave like that again. That’s not a request, man. I don’t care what you do. You’re a part of this family, and it’s a family worth keeping. Don’t reason yourself out of it.”

“Mike…”

“I don’t want to hear it.” Mike lifted his chin and stared at Dad with a jutting jaw. “Promise me you won’t leave like that, without a word, without calling in once or twice or whatever.”

Dad bent his head. He seemed to be searching the floor for something.

“Promise.”

“Mike, I can’t. If I put you or the others in any—”

“What? Danger? That just comes with the territory. Seriously. We’ve all been chopped into mincemeat at some point or another—that’s if we weren’t dimension-hopping, setting foot on alien planets, or talking to brain-monsters piloting people suits. You think I can’t take a couple of ninjas? That’s actually our forte. Now promise.”

Dad nodded once.

“All right, good enough,” Mike said. “But I’m gonna hold you to it, you know. You break it, I will personally hunt you down and pummel you.” He stepped back to the door. “And that goes for you, too, Burrito. Don’t let him go anywhere, you hear me? And if he does, you give me a call on that phone of yours. I swear to you, I’ll keep the service paid for as long as you just call.”

I grabbed at Mike’s hand. “But what about Casey and Raph?”

“Simple,” Mike said. “We talk to them like real living reasonable people, and we do good things for each other, and before you know it, everything will be better. You’ll see.”

“How?” I asked. “Honestly, how?”

“You’ll see!” Mike said, ducking out. He closed the door behind him with a click.

“Dad, are you really going to do what he says?” I whispered.

Dad kneaded his temples. Outside, the wind moaned through the trees, and thunder rolled like a faraway challenge.

“Because I don’t want to go,” I said.

“This is Casey’s property. If he orders us to leave… we will have to leave.”

“But I don’t want to!”

He set a heavy hand on my shoulder. “You are arguing with the wrong person.”

“But I can’t talk to him! He hates me!”

“You’re confusing hate with fear,” Dad said, dropping onto the bed. “He loves his family with every fiber of his being. So far, the Foot haven’t used violence against him—but it’s always a possibility. With us, the threat rises exponentially. Please, understand it from his perspective.”

Rain rattled at the windows, and the wind moaned through the trees. I thought I heard raised voices in the living room below, but there was a flash and the thunder drowned it out.

“What did you do to make them so angry?” I asked. “Was it the assassinations? Was it running with the Foot? Was it… was it Splinter?”

He looked at me sharply. “All of the above. I didn’t know where I stood anymore, and I wasn’t sure that I cared. I fell into things that… normally I would have rejected.”

I dropped beside him on the bed. “I don’t care.”

“Ah… about what?”

“I don’t care what you did as long as we can start over and make it better,” I said. “I’m happy here and I don’t want to leave.”

“If I had my way,” he said, squeezing my hand, “I would let you live here forever.”

I grabbed his hands and curled up against him like I might have when I was a little kid. His heartbeat was a soothing throb against my ear. For a long time we were very quiet, and listened to the storm roll in.


	8. Chapter 8

Sometime around midnight, when all the lights had turned off and raised voices had subsided, Dad and I crept down to grab a quick snack and a shower. We took turns standing outside of the bathroom door to keep an eye out for Raph. He was lying in the easy chair near the porch, but I don’t think he was asleep. When we crept back up to the second floor, I was sure I saw the glint of his eyes.

I didn’t sleep that night, and I don’t think that Dad did, either. It wasn’t just the storm, which shook the house down to the cellar and whipped up the trees until they howled. No matter how Dad tossed, his face was always turned toward the door. He could’ve locked it at any time, but he didn’t.

Sometime just before dawn, I finally drifted off into an uneasy nap, only to wake up an hour later to see Mike squatting beside Dad’s bed. They were talking in low voices.

“Still raining out there,” Mike said. “Just a heavy drizzle, but you know… miserable weather. Why don’t we take it easy today? No practice. Just kick back, force Donnie to make a big breakfast for everybody.”

Dad said something drowsy that I couldn’t quite make out.

“Yeah, you think you got it bad, I found out about a brand new leak right above my bed,” Mike said.

“One moment,” Dad said, leaning up on his elbow. “Saya, are you awake?”

“Nnnyeah.”

“Where did you put Raphael’s clothes?”

When we bumbled down the stairs, wiping sleep out of our eyes, Raphael rolled out of his makeshift bed and rose with two staggering steps. Dad cleared his throat and adjusted the boots underneath his arm. We'd stuffed Raph's sai into the tops so that the hilts stuck out.

“Leo,” Raphael said. He drew out the name. It sounded venomous.

“Raph.”

Donatello stepped dramatically out of the kitchen. “Mike!” he said in a cinematic growl. “You ate my tuna fish sandwich last night.”

“Don!” Michelangelo threw his head back and pointed. “You prepared it without mayonnaise! Have at ye!”

I laughed, and to my surprise, Dad did, too. He raised the bundle of clothing and took a step toward Raphael. The merriment petered out into a tense silence.

“These are yours.” Dad extended the boots in one hand, jacket in the other.

Raph’s eyes flicked from the clothes to Dad’s wary smile. “What are you doing?”

“I’m returning what’s rightfully yours.”

“Oh my god, Leo.” Raphael leaned on the loveseat. “Do you really think this is gonna make anything better? I forgot I even owned that shit.”

“I’d like to start on the right foot this time,” Dad said.

Mike began to snigger.

Dad glared over his shoulder. “That wasn’t intentional.”

“Leo, we ain’t friends. We ain’t ever gonna be friends. Stop.” Raphael sank down in the chair.

Quietly, Dad set the bundle down at his side. Raph’s hand tensed on the arm of the chair.

“Don’t come near me,” he said softly. “Don’t you dare pretend that everything’s okay.”

“I’m not,” Dad said. “Please, be reasonable. I can’t change the past.”

“Exactly,” Raphael spat.

Dad wavered for a moment, clenching and unclenching his hands. Don set his hands on my shoulders, Mike leaned toward me, and altogether we held our breaths.

Dad dropped onto one knee.

Raph jerked away. “What the…”

“Forgive me,” Dad said in a low voice. “I should have been honest with you from the beginning. My behavior was inexcusable. I let my feelings run away with me without any regard for how it might hurt you.”

“Are you playing me?” Raph asked softly.

“No. I was wrong.” Dad shook his head. “You were right.”

I heard a soft intake of breath. I looked up at the balustrade, and there was April and Casey and Shadow, peering intently down at the living room. There were dark circles underneath every eye.

“I never should have joined the Foot,” he said. “I never should have… stayed with Karai.”

Raphael snorted and looked away, but it wasn’t a dismissive sound. “Took you long enough,” he said. When he saw us huddled in the door, he slapped the arms of his chair.

“Goddammit, guys!” he said. “Does this look like the soaps to you?”

“Actually…” Don said, but before he could say anything else Mike elbowed him.

“It’s all right. They should hear it,” Dad said. He slowly rose to his feet, turned, and bowed deeply to us. “I have wronged all of you,” he said, “in one way or another.” His eye lit on me briefly. “Please accept my apologies. I will be more thoughtful in the future. Casey?”

Casey froze. “Yeah…?”

“Please allow us to stay, if only just long enough for us to figure out our next move. I know that I’m putting your family in danger, and I deeply regret it. If you wish for us to leave at once, we will do it.”

“Ah…”

“You don’t have to answer at once. Think about it. Let us know when you have made your decision.”

Without waiting for a response, without looking at anyone, Dad strode past us onto the back porch.  Mike’s eyes were sparkling when he looked at me; Donatello nodded once, squeezed my shoulder, and disappeared into the kitchen. As for me, I felt strangely light, a little giddy. Probably sleeplessness catching up to me.

“So, Case. What’s the answer?” Mike asked.

Shadow arched her eyebrows dramatically and punched Casey in the side.

“Hey!” Casey said. “Ease up there.”

“Say yes,” Shadow said.

Casey’s face reddened. He and April looked at each other and grimaced. Then Casey spread his arms wide and made a grumbling, grunting sound that sounded more like a question than anything else.

“I’m sorry, we don’t speak warthog,” Donatello said from the kitchen.

“Say yes!” Shadow said. She pointed at me. “Do you know what kind of life she’s had to live? She ate rats.”

“No, I didn’t,” I snapped.

“But you might in the future.”

“No!”

She scowled deeply at me. “I’m trying to help you here!”

“Shut up,” Raph said. “I’m trying to think.”

He was looking out the window, where the rain fell in long gray curtains. Fog lay thick in the trees. When he looked back, I felt a jolt of surprise: a different face looked back at me. A sort of weary, lined look, one that I wasn’t sure I understood.

“What are you looking at?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said, lifting my chin. I guess I could have apologized like Dad, but I don’t apologize for the things I meant to do.

His eyes flicked from the crown of my head to my feet. “That’s what I thought.”

I had forgotten about my appearance for weeks, but suddenly I was aware that the tops of my malformed plastron and shell were showing above the low neckline of my oversized t-shirt. I wasn’t just aware of Raphael looking, I was suddenly aware of everyone looking, and what’s worse, I could feel Raphael seeing Karai in me, the same way I could see the Foot in him.

Crushing my hands into fists, I whirled around and pushed past Mike, through the kitchen, onto the back porch. Dad was sitting on the swing, very still, looking out at the trees. I dropped beside him; the chains groaned.

“Did they say anything?” he asked.

“No.”

“What’s wrong? Did Raphael say something?”

“Sort of.” I rubbed the back of my hand against my eyes. “I wish I were human.”

“You look human enough to me.”

“No, Dad, I want to be human all the way. I’d like to go to school like a real human, and have a normal face.” I looked down at my hands, my stubby fingers. At least I had five of them, even if the pinkies did look a little like afterthoughts.

He shook his head. “Perhaps I did wrong by taking you after all. Karai would have taken all this away.” He thumbed the little shell on my back.

I leaned into him. “I guess it would've been nice to be able to bend.”

“I can’t argue with any of that,” he said. “Splinter had to adjust a lot of his training to account for our limited upper-body movement. On one hand: no weapon’s going through this thing. On the other hand…” He slapped my shell and the sound was like hitting hard plastic. “I’ve been hit many times simply because I couldn’t twist around.”

I leaned back and looked at his shell, scarred to kingdom come, the glossy places where Don had filled deep cuts with resin, the rough slashes from blades, craters from bullets.

I looked away. “Do you think taking a shell off leaves a scar?”

“Probably. Then again, for me and your uncles, it’s impossible to remove since it’s attached to our spines. For you, I’m not sure.”

“Would you care?” I asked.

“If you took your shell off? I wouldn’t blame you. I wish I were human sometimes.”

I scuffed my toes on the floorboards. “Only sometimes?”

“I only want to be human when I can’t do something they can.” He sat up straight. “Do you know what I’ve always wanted to do?”

“No, what?”

“Walk in downtown Northampton, in the middle of summer, without a disguise. I’ve always wanted to explore the stores down there like a normal person.”

“Dad!” I laughed. “What would you buy?”

“Presents, mostly.” He smiled and folded his hands together.

“And?”

“That’s all.”

“No, it isn’t! Who would you buy for? And what?” I laughed suddenly, thinking of Dad in one of those dime-a-dozen junk stores, a blocky blinking reptile seriously perusing cheap jewelry.

He chuckled and kicked back in the swing. I kicked off with him, and soon we had the chains and the floorboards squealing together in agony.

“First,” he said, “we would celebrate your birthday properly.”

“You mean with a cake and candles and everything?”

“Exactly. Except we’d put all of your birthdays together. We’d do the same for Christmas. There would be boxes up to the ceiling.” He closed his eyes, folded his hands across his chest, and a grin spread across his face. “I’d have to do the same for everyone in the family, naturally.”

“There wouldn’t be room in the house! And where would you get all of the money?”

“If I could walk into a store, I could take a job at a store.”

I burst into peals of laughter. I could just see Dad in an apron, seriously discussing the merits of a pair of pumps with an old lady.

“Ah, now you’re just making fun of me,” he said.

“No, no, it’s perfect!” I said. “You would be the best cashier ever.”

He nodded sagely, pursing his lips. “Yes, I would,” he said.

“But they don’t make very much, do they?”

He lifted a single finger. “It’s not about the expense, it is about the thought behind the gift.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes you get what you pay for.”

He laughed. “You sound like Karai.”

I froze, and looked at him, but he was still smiling out into the woods, chin propped on his fist.

“Is that… good?” I asked.

“Common sense is an excellent quality in anyone,” he said.

“How else am I like her?” I asked.

“Let’s see. Your voice. Your hair, of course.”

“Oh, come on!”

“Yes, I guess that’s a cop-out.” He turned to me and tilted my head back and forth. “Your face. Flatter than hers, of course, but… that’s my fault.” He chucked me under the chin.

“Is that all?”

“Is that all.” A little of his old wariness crept into his voice.

“I mean, more than what I look like,” I said. “The way I am. The way I act. You know what I mean.”

He looked away, face dark.

“Dad, please.”

All I could hear was the rain plinking on the railing.

I leaned on his arm. “Please. She couldn’t have been all bad.”

“She wasn’t. She isn’t. She’s only doing what she was taught to do.” His brows knotted. “She did everything that was expected of her.” There was a faint note of distress in his voice, the tail end of a faraway howl. “Sometimes I think that we might go back. When you’re, say… sixteen or so. Old enough and big enough and strong enough. We would ask for an audience with her.”

“She wouldn’t see you,” I said.

“I know.”

“But I could tell her all about what a good job you did,” I said. “How I know how to take care of myself, and how much fun I had with everyone here…” My voice faltered.

“She would resent that. Can you blame her?” He shook his head. “Besides, I haven’t done you any favors. When I see Shadow, I realize how much I harmed you.”

“Aw, Dad, it’s not like that.”

"But it is." He stopped pushing the swing, and we slowly rocked to a stop. “When I was young, I was trained in the same way you were. I never asked why; I never thought to. It was enough to please Father. We practiced on street toughs and killed from a young age—always in self defense, of course—but ‘self defense’ only goes so far. It meant more to us than that. It was surreal to look down and think, ‘I took that life away from the world. This blood is their blood, and the last thing they hated was me.’ I dreaded that moment when killing wouldn’t mean anything to me.

“When we were fifteen, Master Splinter finally told us why we had worked so hard.” He opened his hands. “We were to avenge the death of his master. For Splinter, who was old and weary, this was the apex of all his desires. For us, four children—yes, that was what we were, despite our rapid physical maturity—it meant avenging the death of a stranger by killing a stranger. It was an odd sensation, Saya, and something struck me as… off about it. It took me a long time to realize that the father I had loved with all of my heart had used us as tools.”

“Are you saying I’m a tool? Because I’m not,” I said. “You never said, ‘Hey, Saya, today we’re going to kill your mo…’” My voice faded away.

Dad's eyes were wet. “We can’t break away from the sins of our fathers. They craft us in their image.”

“But... but I’m _glad_ I know what to do. I know how to hide and sneak and fight back, and there’s nothing wrong with that, especially since Mom’s a ninja.”

“But look at Shadow,” he said. “Completely carefree.”

“Too carefree,” I said, setting my jaw. “She can’t keep a schedule and she’s lazy about her schoolwork and…”

“She’s happy,” he said. “I realized that you had probably not been happy once in your life.”

“I have, too!”

“Truly happy,” he said. “Not a passing happiness.”

“I’m glad I know how to fight,” I snapped. “You worry too much.”

"Are you glad you know how to fight," he asked, "or is that the only thing you were allowed to understand?"

I didn't answer.

Dad leveled an unblinking stare at me. “When the Shredder returned, it wasn’t my master he sought. It was me.” He turned his head and traced the outlines of scars I had always seen, but never understood: three parallel lines that raced around the back of his skull to the edge of his mouth, three parallel lines that had chipped the shell and raked across his shoulder to gouge his plastron, three parallel lines that streaked across his right arm repeatedly. I had often stared at that arm, misshapen with scar tissue, and wondered how he'd gotten it.

“I was beaten within an inch of my life,” Dad said. “Then the Foot nearly slew my brothers and April in the bargain—April, who had done no harm to anyone. We fled to Northampton—here, to be exact. The Shredder seemed content to see us run; we were safe here. I never wanted to go back. But Raphael missed the city. He wanted to punish the Foot for what they had done. Against my advice, he returned. I felt that I had no choice but to follow.” Dad set his jaw. “I couldn’t let the Shredder kill him.”

“Why not?” I asked.

Dad slapped me on the back of the head. “No.”

I twisted away. “He tried to murder you and he doesn’t care if I go to the Bunker or not,” I snapped. “What kind of person does that, Dad?”

“I started that.”

“You did not.”

“Look. You don’t have to like him, but you must at least try. Family is all we have.”

“Can you just go back to the story?”

He sighed. “When we killed the Shredder a second time, I thought for certain that we would have peace. But cut off one of the hydra’s heads and two more sprout in its place. Criminal elements rose up to take advantage of the power vacuum left by the Shredder’s death, and violence poured across the city… again, violence that was directly connected to my hand.”

I punched him in the arm. “Come on!”

“It was Karai who finally broke it. She cut us a deal: slay Shredder's remaining Elites, be forgiven forever. I had the chance to start over and to live life the way I saw fit. My first inclination was to look for some work that did not involve the sword. Father did not see things quite the same way. I made mistakes…” He shook his head.

“What?” I asked. “What did you do?”

“I grew disillusioned. I left the family. I joined the Foot,” Dad said. “Karai offered me some specialized jobs. Some of which were…” He shook his head again. “They grew progressively more difficult and morally questionable. When I look back, I think she was trying to get rid of me.” His smile was wry. “I spent more and more time planning hits with her. Suddenly, she began inviting me on personal missions; she was asking for my advice; she was showing me her personal art collection and sharing her library with me; she invited me to personal sparring sessions so we could share techniques. One day she presented me with the katana ‘for my service.’ I thought she was my friend.”

“You mean you didn’t love her?”

“It’s… difficult for me to explain. I was deeply devoted to her and I felt she understood me in a way that the family did not. We developed a strong rapport. Romantically? I would be lying if I said it didn’t occur to me. But at the same time, I could not act on my feelings. She was my superior. Besides, Karai is a woman of impeccable taste. She chose her lovers like she chose her art: rarely, and after great reflection. There was no reason to expect her to look at me.” He shrugged. “Eventually she invited me to her apartment for ‘sensitive information,’ and… I don’t know what made her go that far. It couldn’t have been my looks.”

“And then you loved her?”

“I couldn’t see straight for weeks,” he said. “I was in the clouds. She could have asked me to jump off of a skyscraper and I would have done it. Ah, god, I was an idiot.”

“Oh my god.” A smile stole across my face. “She liked you for who you were. That’s amazing.”

“No, it wasn’t. I was only nineteen, Saya. She was thirty-five. She was well-acquainted with the world; I was not.” His gaze grew steely. “It wasn’t fair of her to approach me—not just as an inferior, but as a person. I wasn’t ready for that kind of relationship and I couldn’t have known that I was not ready. In every way, I was dependent on her. Now I wonder if that was the reason that she approached me in the first place.”

“Then… how did it end?”

“She simply stopped contacting me. I was patient.” He folded his hands. “Then I was discreetly dismissed from the Foot with a large check. And that was it, until one of the Elites told me about you.”

“Wait,” I said. “Why would an Elite tell you about me to begin with?”

“We were friends of a sort,” he said. “Sparring partners.”

“Oh. I thought maybe he was a jilted lover or something.”

“I considered it, and it’s possible.”

“Then why wouldn’t she just have a human child?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “When I think about how much work and money went into your creation… I have papers from the Bunker that shows it took hundreds of attempts to create a living fetus, and even then, so many just… self-aborted. The fact you are alive, much less thriving, is an absolute miracle.”

“So she couldn’t have just wanted a child,” I said. “Maybe she wanted a piece of you to remember you by.”

He shook his head. “That’s not the kind of person she is.”

“Then what kind of person is she?” I snapped.

He grunted.

“She’s my mom and you won’t tell me anything about her.”

“What more is there to say?”

“Dad, you were ready to take me up to New York City to kill my own mom, and I’m not sure who she is or even if you’re telling the truth. You didn’t want to kill a stranger, well… neither do I.”

“There is so much that is good about her,” he said. “Here was a person who knew everything that I felt. Sometimes we didn’t even need to talk. She just knew. It was comforting, and that comfort was as intense as a drug. Unfortunately… everything good about her was wrapped up in something that wasn’t.” His voice grew lower and sharper; his knuckles were white. “Her hard work armed thugs, encouraged crime, and fed wars. Her duty made her blind to the suffering of anyone outside of her immediate group. Her perfectionism made her an intolerant slavemaster. And I helped her. I helped her and I did what she wanted, even though I knew none of it was right. Even Raphael tried to talk me out of seeing her, and Raphael is ten times more impulsive than I am.”

 Raphael leaned around the corner of the house, raindrops dribbling off of his chin. “Thanks.”

We both whirled around, staring with open mouths.

“What?” Raphael said. “Who isn’t a ninja in this family?” He limped up the stairs and dropped onto the swing next to me, crushing me against Dad’s side. I shrank away from him, eyes as big as goose eggs. He smelled like sweaty feet.

“Raphael.” Dad looked away. “I… didn’t expect to see you there.”

“You mean, ‘How long was I out there?’ Since the whole presents discussion.”

“Ah.” Dad’s face was flushed.

“So what were you gonna get me?”

Dad shrugged. “Uh… video games… I suppose. Something with, um, shooting in it.”

“Brilliant. You don’t know the first thing about video games. You’d probably grab the first shit you saw.”

“I’d… research.”

“Calm down, buddy. I’m not that devoted to Karai. Not gonna tell her about your little plot or whatever.” Raph stretched his legs out and threw his arm over the back of the swing, resting his palm on the back of Dad’s head. I wanted to slide off, but I was pinned between them, and I was afraid to move lest Raph suddenly realize I existed.

“Thank you,” Dad said in a halting voice.

“What’d bring you to kill your girlfriend, anyway?” Raph said.

“What do you think?” Dad asked. “I want to be free again.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I want to drop the use of the sword entirely.”

“You, drop _ninjitsu?_ You’d be miserable. You don’t got anything else.”

Dad looked down at me. Raph’s look followed. My face blistered, and I wriggled vainly between them.

“Hey, hey.” Raph grabbed me by the shell. “Stop. Truce. I’m sorry I freaked you out. You got that? Maybe I was a little angry, but I ain’t ever angry enough to send you to the Bunker.”

I squirmed. “But you said…”

“Yeah, well, maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s time we all say good-bye to Karai and all of her shitty plots.” He cleared his throat and then held his hand out to me.

“Let’s start over,” he said. “I’m Raphael, the good-looking one of the family.”

I glanced at Dad, but he was staring at Raphael with a startled smile. So I slowly reached over and put my hand in Raph’s. He wrapped his fingers around mine.

“Saya,” I said. My voice came out strangely high-pitched.

“Good.” We shook. “Nice to meet ya, don’t stab me in the knee ever again. That’s all.”

“Then don’t send me to the Bunker,” I said.

“Karai wouldn’t send you there.” His eyes rose to Dad’s. “Don’t tell her lies, Leo. Doesn’t make you look good.”

Dad’s face fell. “I’m not lying.”

“Hey, genius, you were the one that told me that the most obvious solution is usually the right answer,” Raph said. “You know how people who get close to Karai tend to die? Do you think she likes that?” He cracked his cane on the floor. “Think about it.”

“No,” Dad said, holding his head. “I can’t think about her anymore. I’ve run in so many circles and I’m sick of it. It’s got to end.”

“Oh, is that why you want her to die? It won’t work. Your guilt’ll kick in. You can’t kill her any more than you can kill us.”

“Then how on earth do I stop this?” Dad threw his hands out as though to encompass the whole of the forest. “I feel like I have never had a single thought or choice of my own. First I am Splinter’s shadow, then I’m Karai’s, then I try to strike out on my own, and even in trying to raise Saya I end up creating the same conflicts all over again. Look at Shadow. She is forming herself, she has choices of her own. But Saya… I’m making a tool out of Saya the same way Splinter made a tool of me.”

Raph set his hand on the back of Dad’s head. For a moment they were both quiet. The wind twinkled in the wind chimes.

“I don’t got answers,” Raph said.

“I know.”

“Karai’s death’ll make everything worse, though. Don’t do it.”

“I won’t.”

“Good.”

“Then what do we do?” I asked.

“We just gotta start where we’re standing,” Raph said. “That’s what I’m gonna do. I’ve royally fucked up my past, too, without any help from this idiot.” He lightly popped Dad on the back of the head, then stood with a groan, leaning on his cane. “I’m gonna look back and I’m gonna say, ‘Fuck that.’ Then I’m gonna move on and do the best I can. I’m tired of all this bullshit. Let it follow me, but at least I’m not goin’ to make it worse.”

“Do you think we can just live here?” I asked.

“Sure. Why not?” Raph asked. “Let’s all just live here, a big happy family. I’m done fighting. I’m done. When I was younger, you know, it was like I was putting my mark on the world somehow—telling it how much I wanted it to go to hell. Turns out the world don’t notice and the world don’t care. And if it don’t care, then why should I?”

The back door creaked open and Mike flattened his face against the screen. “Breakfast is getting cold, guys…?”

“We’re comin’.” Raph held a hand out to Dad. Dad rose, took it, and threw an arm around his shoulder. There was a long, quiet hug. I stood awkwardly against the swing, feeling outside again.

“Back at last, fearless leader,” Raph laughed softly. “Took us long enough, huh?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  Art by my bff, [Zak](http://zakniteh.tumblr.com)


	9. Chapter 9

I crept to the bedroom after breakfast and watched the rain. Then I opened a book and flipped through the pages. I could hear everyone talking in pleasant voices down in the living room; light laughter that sounded like Mike’s, a discordant honk as Donatello sneezed, a roar of laughter. The house settled into a peaceful reverie, but it was a peace that was outside of me. There were oceans of history swirling around me and all I could do was see the surface.

I slipped into Shadow’s room. She was lying on her bed, grinning into her phone.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said without looking up.

I looked up at the TV. _Stardust_ was on, right at the moment where the witch’s head gets blasted off. I’d watched it about ten times, and I’d thought for sure I could watch it another twenty, but suddenly I was sick of movies and shows. Even the sound of the rain on the roof was starting to grate on my nerves.

“Do you want to do something?” I asked.

“Hmm? Like what?” She was texting, and still hadn’t looked at me.

“Anything. I don’t know.”

“You can get on my computer if you want,” she said. “It should be on. Just don’t close any of my windows, and no downloads, okay?”

I was in her chair before she could say another word, legs folded up beneath me. I minimized her browser, which had about three hundred tabs open, and then opened a fresh window for myself. Google flashed up, cursor winking at me.

Biting my tongue, I tapped out my search terms: _Karai_. _Foot Clan._

Hundreds of articles popped up. Miwa "Karai" Watanabe, CEO of Watanabe Shipping Co and about a dozen other companies—places as varied as textile factories and restaurant chains. There were dozens of trials to her name—racketeering, embezzlement, drug running, kidnapping, murder—but they’d mostly centered around the people in her employ, and hadn’t managed to implicate her. She’d had a short stint in jail for cooking the books, but she had managed to shorten it with legal wizardry. Every picture of her seemed to sport the same two expressions. The first was a fierce flat face with flashing eyes, as though she were seconds from socking someone in the jaw; the second was a kind of bored, haughty look, like she had better things to do with her time than engage with plebes.

Swallowing, I went back in time, ten years ago, to when she had known Dad.

I sat up straight. The first pictures I found from that era were pictures where she was smiling. Well, more or less. It was the same weird smile as I’d seen on the candid photo, just colder. Her lips were twisted as though she were thinking of a mean joke.

Then I started digging into her past in Japan. That’s when I found the first photos of her with her first daughter: Akemi Watanabe. My older sister, I realized with a start. A person who I would never know. Waves of loneliness rolled over me.

 _Stupid_ , I told myself, and pinched my arm. _Stop it._

There was genuine warmth in Karai’s face in every photo that included Akemi. She wasn’t touching her daughter in the photos—but in each one, they stood side by side, just a hand’s breadth away from each other. Here was a photo of Karai in a board room, sitting at the end of a table—her daughter standing obediently behind her with a stack of manila folders. Here was a grainy photo of a Foot training session, and off-center was Karai gently correcting Akemi’s posture. Here was an accidental shot of a group of Elites, and in the corner of the photo, Akemi and Karai eye to eye, in the middle of a conversation. Somehow, the photographer had captured their self-contained world: there were unspoken volumes passing between them.

“What are you looking at?” Shadow asked in my ear.

I jumped and closed the browser. “Nothing.”

Shadow patted me on the shoulder. “I’m going out tonight with some friends. We’re gonna watch a movie. Do you want to come?”

The ennui lifted off of my shoulders. “Really? You’ll take me?”

“It’s some dumb action movie that’s full of explosions. I think you might need it.”

“But my face…”

Shadow lifted a package of dust masks off her bed and shook them. “Boom.”

I laughed. “But who’s gonna fall for that?”

“Just say you’re from Japan. It’s not _completely_ a lie.” Her eyes narrowed and she grinned. “Don’t say anything to your dad. He’ll say no.”

I nodded.

**

That evening, around six, we crunched down the drive. I’d thrown on a pastel blue windbreaker from April’s closet and was wearing the dust mask and a cap. Walking away from the house grew progressively more difficult; I looked back over my shoulder until it was lost in the trees, and then I felt nervous and flighty. I reached into my pocket to touch my phone, and pulled up short.

“I left my phone at the house,” I said. “I’d better go back.”

“You won’t need it. I've got mine,” she said, grabbing my arm. “Come on.”

She practically dragged me to the end of the drive, then leaned back on the fencepost and started texting again.

“Who are you talking to?” I asked.

“Hunter. From school.” She grinned and her screen lit up her face.

I looked over my shoulder, expecting to see Dad at any moment, or to feel his hand on my shoulder. I saw nothing.

“Don’t worry. Everyone’s on the back porch,” Shadow said. “They’ll think we’re in my room.”

A few minutes passed. Every time I heard a car, I hunched my shoulders and dropped my head, stifling a feeling of panic. Every time I heard a branch crack, I looked for transients or cyclists. I groped in my pockets for my throwing knives—the ones I’d left back in the nightstand.

“Maybe I should go back and get my knives,” I said.

Shadow looked horrified. “Weapons?” she said. “Why?”

“Well, uh, what if someone takes a picture of me…”

“You’d kill them?” Shadow asked. “For taking your picture?”

“No, I meant that if we needed to defend ourselves…”

She shook her head and put her phone down. “Hey, hey, it’s okay.” She put an arm around my shoulder. “You can’t stay afraid forever. It’s good to get out of the house. Don’t worry. You’ll like Hunter. His brother’s coming, too. He’s around your age.” Her eyes sparkled.

“Wait. You’re _not_ trying to set me up!”

“No, no!” Shadow said, punching me in the shoulder. “I think you need more friends, that’s all.”

“But I’m… I don’t want…”

Before I could say anything, a beat-up Corolla rattled around the curve, loud rap music pouring out of the windows. It swerved toward us, spitting gravel into the ditch. I jumped back, but Shadow stood with one hand on her hip as the car rattled to a stop beside her.

“Hey, Shadow!” yelled the driver. He was wearing ear plugs and a black shirt emblazoned with a skull and crossbones.

“Hunter!” Shadow jumped into the front seat, kicking past a pile of cans and crumpled paper piles, and swept Hunter up in a wild embrace. Her lips pressed against his and her fingers knotted in the fabric of his t-shirt. My mouth fell open.

Shadow broke away, laughing. Her whole face had lit up. She turned and waved at me. I don’t think she actually saw me; she was riding a high I couldn’t begin to comprehend.

“Introductions are in order!” she said. “Everyone, this is Saya, my cousin from Japan. She’s gonna be staying with us for a while.”

I froze.

“Sweet! I love Japan,” Hunter said. He didn’t seem to see me, either. “Come on, Saya, back seat is open for you. Don’t be shy, don’t be shy! Move over, Travis.”

Heavy, black dread clenched up in my guts. Suddenly I couldn’t stop thinking about slipping into the underbrush and never coming out again. But somehow, I lifted one foot, and then the other—and then I had opened the creaky back door and ducked in. Trash crinkled underfoot, and there was an overwhelming stale stink of body odor, cigarette smoke, and old food. There were two kids in the back seat already—a lanky red-haired guy with braces, and a chunky boy not much taller than I was. The chunky boy’s bangs hung in his face and every time he spoke, he swept them back with the side of his hand.

 _“Konnichiwa!”_ said Bangs-Boy with a bright grin. He was missing one of his teeth. _“Domo arigatou.”_

“Shut up. You just said ‘thank you,’” said the red-haired guy. “Hey, Saya, how are you? Welcome to America!”

“Th-thanks,” I said. I glanced up at the front seat. But suddenly Hunter smashed his foot down on the accelerator and the car pealed off down the road. I crushed myself against the back seat and fumbled for a seatbelt. My hands sifted uselessly through trash.

“Sorry, we don’t have seatbelts back here,” said the Bangs-Boy. “By the way, my name’s Travis!” He held out a hand.

I shook it rapidly, but I couldn’t force any words out.

“Mine’s Robert, but you can call me Rob,” said the red-haired guy. He thrust his hand out. His eyes lingered on my face in a way I didn’t like. I took his hand quickly and only shook it once. It was sweaty and sticky.

“Can you speak English?” Travis asked.

“Y-yeah. My Dad’s American,” I said, and seized at the cushions as Hunter roared down a tight curve.

“Lucky!” said Rob, whistling. “It’s hard to get an Asian girlfriend around here.”

I crushed myself against the door. I tried to look out of the window at the trees, but suddenly I could feel car sickness creeping up on me. I closed my eyes again. I think I would have been better if I couldn’t feel the bass line throbbing like an alien heartbeat through my entire torso.

“Hey, Hunter, you’re scaring Saya,” said Travis, leaning between the seats. But Hunter was chattering something at Shadow and the music was too loud. Hunter flew down another sharp curve with the finesse of a racecar driver, and I wrapped my arms around my belly.

A sticky hand settled on mine.

“You gonna be okay?” Rob said. “Can I help you?”

I shook my head no.

Rob’s hand tightened on mine. “You wanna sit together up at the theater?” he asked.

I waited for Shadow to jump in—perhaps to say something about my age—but she didn’t. She was shouting at Hunter over the music; how could I expect her to hear us in the back seat? I didn’t dare move, I didn’t dare speak. I was barely holding down the nausea.

“Why are you wearing that dust mask?” Travis asked.

“It’s what they do over in Japan!” said Rob. “To keep germs out. But it doesn’t really work. You know that, right, Saya? That it doesn’t work? You don’t have to wear that around here if you don’t want to.”

“I want to,” I said. “Thanks.”

“What’s your favorite anime?” asked Travis.

“I… I don’t know.”

“But you gotta know!” Rob said. “Don’t be shy. We’re not gonna make fun of you. My favorite is _Attack on Titan_.”

The title came to me suddenly. “ _Teen Titans_ ,” I blurted.

“ _Teen Titans_ isn’t anime!” laughed Travis.

“Maybe it is to her!” said Rob indignantly.

“I haven’t been in Japan for a long time!” I snapped. “Please, I’m… I’m really carsick.”

“Are you gonna throw up?” Travis asked.

“Shut up, Travis,” Rob snapped. “You don’t talk to a lady like that.”

Soon they were arguing with each other about what ladies did and did not like and there were several minutes of blissful loneliness. I couldn’t think of anything but my stomach. But then Hunter punched the brake and soon we were creeping into the city limits at a bearable speed. It was the kind of picture you’d see in a movie set: freshly-painted clapboard houses from the 1800s, ruddy brick stores blazing in the sunset, church spires stabbing skyward.

But it seemed that just as quickly as we had passed between the old houses, we were sweeping through the city limits into more fields, scattered and battered farmhouses, rusty junk collections.

I pressed my face against the glass. “Are we leaving Northampton?” I asked. “Where’s the theater?”

“Oh, Northampton doesn’t have a theater!” Rob said. “We’re going to the theater in Hadley. There's one at the mall.”

Hadley? Where the hell was that? I shrank down against the cushions and squeezed my eyes shut. I had imagined the downtown Dad dreamed up: stolid old stores from the last century, fragrant flowerbeds, towering old trees, buskers.

“I don’t want to go to Hadley,” I said in a tiny voice.

“But they don’t have a theater,” Travis said, blowing his bangs out of his eyes. “What are you so upset about?”

“It’s far away, that’s all.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Rob. “It’s just ten minutes. Seriously, don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”

When I glanced up at him, I shuddered. He looked down on me with that expression particular to scientists and serial killers: a broad grin and light in his eyes, the thrill of observing an unknown species.

When we finally stopped at the theater, I stumbled out and leaned against the nearest lamppost, taking deep breaths.

“Are you okay?” Shadow asked.

“She’s carsick!” Travis shouted gleefully.

Rob was suddenly beside me. I smelled him before I saw him—a combination of sour clothes and sweat—and then his hand settled on my shoulder. I jerked away, but not in time: his eyes narrowed.

“What’s wrong with your back?” he said, and reached for my shoulder-blades.

I backed up, hugging my chest. “I’ve got some health problems,” I said. “Please don’t touch me there.”

“Hey, calm down,” he said. “Just trying to help.”

“I don’t need your help,” I snapped, and rushed past him toward Shadow.

“Rude!” he said.

I bumped up against her side, mentally begging her to speak to me. But she had pushed her hand into Hunter’s, and they were staring at each other like they had never seen another human being before. She looked down at me, but she didn’t see me, and when she smiled, it was from a half-forgotten habit. I thought I would throw up.

I thrust my hands into my pockets and pattered just behind them. Travis and Rob flanked me, confusion on their faces.

“You’re kinda rude, you know!” Rob said.

“I heard you the first time,” I said.

“I thought Asian people were supposed to be polite,” he said.

“She’s only half-Asian,” said Travis.

“True. Maybe she’s been in America too long,” Rob said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“American women are pushy and loud and they have zero manners,” said Travis. “Maybe you should pay more attention to your mom and how polite she is. That’s how real women act.”

I started to laugh. I really couldn’t help it. The fear lifted a little.

Rob’s face reddened. “What are you laughing at?”

“You have no idea!” I said.

Thank god, soon we were at the box office, and Shadow pulled our prepaid tickets out of her pocket. We pushed through the doors and I stopped, stock still, eyes wide. The posters! They were larger than life, gloriously composed: gritty warriors hefting machine guns, soulful actresses staring out across vast distances toward a lost ideal, cartoon characters lunging through the air in vivid color. The lobby was dim, but the fluorescents were bright, illuminating ads for Coke and candy and heaps of steaming popcorn. Chattering families and friends passed on every side, their voices echoing on the tiles, and outside was the mall entrance, where golden store windows beckoned. For a moment it was all I could do to drink in all of the colors and sound.

“What’s wrong with you now?” Rob asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

“It’s her first time to a movie theater!” Shadow crowed, throwing an arm around my shoulder. “You want some popcorn, Saya?”

“But don’t they have theaters in Japan?” asked Travis.

Before I could snap at him, Shadow pulled me in line and loaded me up with a large Coke and a huge tub of popcorn. I stared at her doubtfully. Her arm was over my shoulder, but hung loosely; Hunter was on the other side, leaning into her, his hand thrust into her back pocket. When she looked at me I felt like I had become something like a video game character, an inanimate thing with a bulleted list to be completed.

I followed Hunter and Shadow to the theater. Their heads were practically touching, and Shadow’s hand lingered just above his ass, her fingertips pressed into the small of his back. I felt ill again.

When we slipped into the theater, the lights were just dimming. A few families sat together down in the middle of the room. Out of old habit, I went for the back wall—I didn’t want anyone sitting behind me—and slipped into the middle seats. Rob and Travis didn’t follow, instead angling for front seats, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

The film was about giant robots fighting extradimensional aliens. Blossoming fireballs, cities crunched into dust beneath a behemoth's feet, a skyscraper-high monstrosity snapping its vast jaws on a robot’s outflung arm, a multinational team of highly trained pilots who shared their brains, a robot bashing a monster in the face with a fishing boat. I immediately forgot about the creepy boys, Shadow, and everyone at the farmhouse. The music carried me like a bird on a breeze.

When the credits rolled, I remained in the darkness a while, holding the magic of the film inside of me. Then I looked down. I instantly regretted it. Shadow was practically sitting in Hunter’s lap, laughing softly, pressing her lips against his ear, hands creeping down his sides.

The magic dissipated as if it had never been. I frantically pattered down the stairs and into the corridor, clutching at my half-eaten popcorn, feeling panicky and detached.

 _Why_ , I asked myself, _do I always feel like I’m looking in?_

Not knowing what to do, I lingered outside of the door, praying that Shadow would come out and that she would have eyes for me, if only for a little bit.

I smelled him at the last second.

Rob’s hand fell on my arm. “Hey, are you feeling better?”

“Leave me alone,” I said, jerking away. That was when I realized he was looking at my face, and his mouth was hanging open. I had stuck my dust mask in my pocket to eat popcorn and I had forgotten to put it back on.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “What happened to your face?”

“None of your business,” I snapped, jerking my mask out of my pocket.

“No, wait!” He grabbed my arm and twisted it back. “Travis! Come here! Look at this!”

A wave of heat roared up from the pit of my stomach. I whirled around, flung the popcorn down, and stamped on his toes as hard as I could. He squawked and bent over, but his grip only tightened, so I swung and cold-cocked him. His nose crunched under my knuckles and blood squirted all over my windbreaker. He crashed onto the carpet, blood bubbling out of his nostrils, and sprawled limply in a pile of my popcorn. I stared down, standing over him, fire racing through me. Then I thrust my toe underneath his ribcage and flipped him over onto his side.

“Oh my god!” Travis cried. “What are you doing?”

I glanced up, only to see that Travis and a small knot of people had gathered in the hallway, their mouths hanging open… some of them with their phones lifted up to eye level. Cold, empty horror froze me in place.

“Don’t touch me,” I said. My voice came out in a monotone. I didn’t feel anything.

Suddenly, one of the theater employees peeked around the wall and pointed at me. A second, bulkier employee skidded around the corner and trotted toward me, followed by two nervous kids.

I sprang off down the corridor as fast as I could. There was a shout behind me, and I could hear the lumbering gait of the big guy, but there was no way they were going to catch me—I wouldn’t let them. I punched through the “Exit” doors and into the chilly New England night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd just like to devote a certain portion of this chapter to mini-me, when my cousin took me on an excursion with her and a "friend" and that friend was actually a date. Surprise!
> 
> I chose "Watanabe" because it's the equivalent of "Smith." Well. Sort of. Especially in Tokyo, though. It made sense to me that ninjas wouldn't want to stand out, so they wouldn't have particularly notable names. Of course, then you have a character named after an adjective so whatever I guess. It's more like the Mafia at this point I suppose
> 
> There are two characters who always disappear in TMNT: Oroku Nagi and Karai's unnamed daughter. The reason for Karai's daughter getting the axe is pretty obvious--it's a fridging--but I've always been curious about her. Especially lately. Maybe I'm just obsessed with family stories, how we deal with loss. I don't know. But whatever the case, I think that she would make for some interesting fiction, up to and including her death.


	10. Chapter 10

I didn’t stop running until I hit the road, and then I paused to catch my breath and look for road signs. Northampton. It wouldn’t be that hard, would it? Maybe a couple of hours on foot.

I had only been walking for a few minutes when the sinking feeling hit me: once I was in Northampton, I would have no idea how to get back to the house. I hadn’t paid any attention to the land, directions, or signs when we were driving—I’d been far more fixated on my fear. I couldn’t even ask for directions; I didn’t know what the farmhouse’s address was.

For a while I thought about going back to the theater. Then I thought of the bulky employee and Rob with his broken nose, and how I’d have to ride back in the car crushed up against him and Travis. Shadow would be pissed. And the phones! I’d been recorded, and there was no telling how good the footage was or what it had captured, and no telling what it meant for the safety of everyone in Northampton.

I hunched over and kept on walking.

I kept my head down and my hands in my pockets, and I tried to keep far enough off of the road that I wouldn’t attract attention. I relished the dimness between shopping centers, and every time I passed beneath a lamppost, I felt like a convict beneath a floodlight.

I had nearly made it to the dark spaces where fields and run-down houses parted Hadley and Northampton when I heard a car pull into the parking lot behind me. It crawled up beside me, crunching over the pavement, and I spared a single look. Despair welled up in my chest: it was a cop car. But I remembered what Dad had said: “Running is your last option with the police. Be polite, don’t step out of line, and tell as much of the truth as you can. It’ll help you keep track of the lies.”

I scanned the parking lot for escape routes and felt a little ill. There was a lot of open space and it would take quite a bit of running to outpace the car and reach the nearby pasturage, which had been mowed.

The window rolled down and a white man with wobbling jowls leaned out. “Hello there!” he said. “Do you need help, honey?”

Suddenly I thought I was going to cry. “I’m lost,” I said. “I need to get to Northampton.”

“Northampton?” he said. “Why?”

“I live there.”

“Ah. Then how on earth did you get all the way out here?”

“Friends drove me,” I said.

“And what happened to your friends? Did they just leave you up here?”

“No.” I swallowed. “I… fought with them.”

He whistled. “Why don’t you get in the car? I can take you home and we can talk to your parents.”

“I’m just visiting my aunt and uncles,” I said. “I don’t remember what the address is.”

“You don’t have your phone?”

“I forgot it.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll get you home.” His face crinkled up into a bright smile. “Come on, now. Get out of the cold.” He shifted a laptop over and patted the seat beside him.

So I slipped into the passenger-side door, nervously eying the dashboard full of lights and equipment and the grate between him and the back seat. He rolled up his window, and he started driving down the road. The lights of Northampton twinkled just over the trees, and the hills were undulating, amorphous blackouts against the stars, the spine of some sleeping monster.

“What’s your aunt’s name?” he asked. “Your uncles?”

Fresh panic swelled up in my chest. April and Casey had never told me their false names. I swallowed and tried to say something, but I felt like my tongue had swollen up. I made a choking sound and pressed my fist up into my mouth. I tasted blood.

“Is something wrong?” he asked. “You weren’t hurt, were you?”

I shook my head. “I’m fine.”

“I think I’m going to take you to the police department in Northampton,” he said. “Maybe your family is already looking for you there.”

I nodded dumbly and squeezed up against the door.

“I do hate to bother you,” he said, “but can you tell me what their names are? I can call ahead and see if anyone’s looking for you.”

_Here goes nothing._

“Winslow,” I said. “April and Casey Winslow. My cousin’s name is Evelyn. She writes books and… there’s a movie coming out about one of them… and they live in a farmhouse outside of town…”

“Great! That’s all I need,” he said. “Well, this will be a piece of cake. Don’t fret. We’ll get you home in no time.”

Soon we had slipped up into city limits, passing beneath the yellow lights and through light traffic, until we reached a two-story red-brick edifice with yellow windows, “Northampton Police Department” lit in dull ocher by the lights. I was led into a lobby and deposited into an office, a blanket wrapped around me and a bitter black coffee stuck into my hand. I was given pointed glances for the blood on my sleeves.

I curled up, closing my eyes, and tried not to think about how much I had screwed up. There was some low conversation outside. I turned my mug in circles, pressing my palms against the hot ceramic.

There was a knock on the doorframe. I glanced up. A female officer with her hair knotted into a no-nonsense bun stood there, smiling at me.

“Can I come in?” she asked.

“Sure. I mean, it’s your office, right?”

“I didn’t want to make you nervous.” She pulled up a chair and sat in front of me, smiling kindly. “I’m Officer Jackson, and I’m going to help you find your family. You mentioned the Winslows?”

“Yes,” I said, sitting up.

“Are you sure that’s their last name?” she asked.

My stomach sank. “I might be wrong. I don’t know them very well.”

Something flashed across her face. I could have bitten my own tongue off.

“We haven’t been able to locate their address,” she said. “What’s your name, dear?”

“Saya.”

“Your full name.”

“Saya Winslow,” I said. My voice cracked.

“And what’s your home address and phone number?”

“We just moved up here,” I said. “My Dad and me. This is our new home.”

“I thought you said you were visiting?”

“We were, sort of.” _Shit!_ “We were homeless for a while.” _Shit shit shit._

“Do you know where you stayed before this?” she asked. There was a new smile on her face, a smile I associated with unwelcome advice.

“Texas.”

“Where in Texas?”

“I don’t know. Amarillo. We move a lot.” _Oh, god, why am I still talking?_

“What about your mother?” she asked.

I looked away. “She’s dead.”

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Ah, all right.” She put a hand on mine; I stiffened. “Is everything all right at home?”

“Yes, it’s great,” I said, jerking away from her. “I just messed up today, that’s all.”

“How?”

“I went to the movies with Shadow,” I said. “I shouldn’t have. I should have stayed at home.”

“Shadow?”

I swore in my head. “Shadow is Evelyn’s friend. We went to the movies with their boyfriends and I got in an argument and punched one of them.”

“And why did you punch him?”

“He touched me.”

Sympathy passed over her face. “Where?”

I tapped my upper arm without looking at her.

“Why was he touching you?”

“Because he was making fun of my face.”

“I’m so sorry. What was his name?”

“Robert. And the other one’s name was Travis and there was a guy named Hunter.” I shrugged. “That’s all.”

“So you tried to walk home?”

“Yeah.” I tried to twist myself up into a ball. I wondered if I could cover my whole body with the blanket and when she’d go away.

“Well, thank you for talking to me, Saya.” She rose to her feet. “I’m going to make some phone calls and fill out a little paperwork. We’ll have you home in no time.”

**

I must’ve dozed off at some point. I woke up to the sound of low talking in the lobby again. There was a gray light peeking through the slats in the windows. My stomach rumbled and my mouth was dry.

Officer Jackson knocked at the door again, and I sat up, stretching.

“Good news! Your aunt just came in,” she said. “I’m so sorry that you had to wait.”

“That’s okay. Thanks,” I said, and slipped out of the chair with the blanket wrapped tightly around me. The officer set her hand on my shoulders and guided me toward the lobby. I was already envisioning my plate of scrambled eggs and a cup of juice. What was I going to say to Shadow? I rubbed at my eyes and stifled a yawn. What was I going to say to _Dad_? I had probably been on YouTube for hours by now. I could imagine the headline: “Ugly Girl Punches Date!!!”

“Here we are!” said Officer Jackson. “Safe and sound.”

I raised my eyes, yawning, and stopped dead.

She leaned against the counter, elegant and relaxed, her hair shorn in a close bob. She wore a no-nonsense black business suit with low pumps and a simple gold necklace like a simple office worker, but when she shifted I could see that her bared arms were crisscrossed with pale and shining scars. She was a shadowy cut-out against the doors.

“Saya,” she said in a husky voice. “I am so glad they found you.”

My knees knocked together and all the color left my face. I don’t know how I kept standing.

A smile twisted across her face. “You must know,” she said, “that Aunt Shadow and Uncle Casey are just outside as well, and they can’t leave until we do.”

The officer leaned down beside me. “Is everything okay?” she asked.

What can I say? I did not say that I didn’t know her. I did not fight back. I did not turn tail down the hallway, jimmy a window, slide out, head for the woods. No. I looked the officer in the face and I said, “Yes. Thank you for everything.” Then I gave her the blanket and I took my first awkward step toward my mother, then my second, then my third—every joint resisting me, my guts knotting up, until I was as tense as a pressed spring. I stepped out of the white square of morning light and into her shadow. She smelled faintly of high-end cologne.

Gently, her hands cupped my face, and she turned my chin up. She ran her fingers through my hair and brushed it back over the back of my head, then settled briefly on the topmost scute of my little shell and pinched it through my shirt as though to assure herself that it was real. Her twisted smile drifted away, and all that was left was a furrowed brow and pursed lips. Her hand settled over the back of my neck, her fingertips barely brushing my skin.

“Thank you, officers,” she said in a dreamy voice. “I will send a generous donation to your organization.”

Officer Jackson laughed. “Oh, that’s really not nece…”

“This way, Saya,” Mom said, and with only the lightest press of her index finger, pushed me outside.

I felt like I was in some kind of fever dream. Everything was unreal; the color of the sky, the vivid morning light, the sound of Mom’s heels crunching officiously over the pavement. I felt like I was outside of myself—Mom’s fingers tickling against the back of someone else’s neck, the swing of my stride someone else’s gait, the throb of my heart someone else’s pulse. I brutally pinched myself. At any moment, my alarm would go off. At any moment, Dad would be shaking me awake. It would be time for katas. Then there would be breakfast…

My stomach grumbled like a dissatisfied cow and a pang of hunger shot through me. Suddenly all I could think of was Mike’s face—then Don with April’s old apron, the ties lengthened with shoelaces—and then Dad sitting cross-legged before the pond. I dared to look up at Mom’s face, and her eyes met mine. They were flat and black. I couldn't pick out her pupils. I shrank away.

There was a nondescript black car in the parking lot. She opened the door for me. I hesitated.

“Get in,” she said. “Quickly.”

“What about Shadow and Casey?” I asked.

She jerked her chin toward the street and I looked up. There was the old black car we’d brought from Texas, hood still banged up to kingdom come. Casey was hunched up in the driver’s seat, staring at me with the foulest expression I’d ever seen, and Shadow sat beside him, white-faced, absolutely still. Two men were leaning by each window, both with crossed arms. The one standing nearest to Shadow smiled at me and lifted the crook of his elbow; I saw the butt of a pistol.

I quickly slipped inside, and Mom followed. My new prison was a spacious back seat, charcoal gray with plum accents, and separated from the driver by a tinted window.

“Okay! You’ve got me!” I said. “You can let them go!”

Mom didn’t regard me at all. She cracked her window and gestured with a loose wave of her hand. The two men immediately stepped away from the car. The one nearest to Casey patted the roof and leaned down to say something as he left; Casey’s lips curled and his fists tensed on the wheel. And then Mom rolled the window up, and we pulled out, and the two men jumped in another black car to tail us. We hadn’t reached the end of the street before two more cars pulled out in front of us—all black sedans with tinted windows, like ours. Soon we were rolling through downtown Northampton like the President’s cavalcade. There were the streets Dad had talked about, the little stores all crammed together, a colorful tapestry of people passing beneath the freckled light. They were so close; I had nearly made it. They belonged to other people now.

I pressed myself up against the window, curling into as small a ball as I could. I felt like I could cry.

“Put on your seatbelt,” Mom said.

I shook my head.

Her voice deepened. “I do not make requests.”

I jerked the seatbelt out and slammed the connectors together so hard that I beat bruises into my palms.

Her silence was terrible. “Is this how _he_ taught you to act?” she asked at last.

I curled up again, staring numbly out of the window.

“Ah, well. It’s over now,” she said. “That is all that matters.”

“I don’t want to go,” I grumbled into my knees.

“Why not?” Her tone was loaded. I pinched my lips between my teeth and said nothing.

“Once you are back,” she said at last, “you will finally understand what your father robbed from you. Your education, your comforts, your language.”

“I don’t want to go!” I said, whirling around. “You’re forcing me! I said I’d come! I just wasn’t ready yet, that’s all!”

She stared at me without blinking, the morning sun blazing in behind her. “Soon you will wonder why you struggled so much for nothing.”

My stomach grumbled again, painfully loud. I glared over my folded arms.

“We cannot stop yet. I’m sorry.” Her voice was flat.

I pressed my face against the window. We were sweeping out of the rolling hills, through a wooded valley, over a steel bridge. The trees flashed by. I touched the lock, then pulled on it. Nothing. It didn’t move. Child locks, probably. When I looked back over my shoulder, Mom was staring at me again, her arms folded.

A thought crept into my brain then, one I hadn’t considered in weeks and weeks. We were alone in the back seat, and the tinted glass prevented the driver from seeing or hearing our exchange. My eye flicked to the seatbelts. Mom’s was close enough to her throat… and if she struggled, I could plunge my fingers into her eyes, or my fist down her throat…

Suddenly she began to laugh, a deep throaty mocking sound.

I froze, red-faced. “What’s so funny?”

“Do you really think you could overpower me?” she asked.

I opened my mouth and closed it.

“You’re too small. You’re too weak. Your reach is too short, so you would have to remove your own seatbelt, thus drawing attention to yourself and your intent.” She crossed her legs and suddenly I was aware at how long they were, and how easily she could thrust one heel straight into my face from the other side of the car.

I shuddered.

“Yes,” she said softly, eyes sparkling. “At least you are attentive.”

“I’ve killed a man before,” I snapped. “I’ve killed several men.”

“So have I,” she said. “Except mine were not undisciplined vagrants.”

I bristled. “I killed a PI.”

“Undisciplined PIs are not much better.” She smiled at me and pressed her hand against her breast. “There is no need to be angry, Saya. I am not angry at you. I am delighted. You remind me of myself when I was your age.”

“Are you going to take away my shell?” I blurted.

“Does it make you uncomfortable?”

“No. I want to keep it.”

“Then keep it.” She smiled at me again. Oh my god, she gave me a real smile, like the ones with Akemi.

“But you told Dad…”

The smile vanished. “Don’t speak of him right now.” She reached across the center seat and brushed my hair back again. “Right now it is just you and me. Would you like breakfast? What? Where?”

I started to cry. All I could think of was Donatello in his stupid apron, dramatically holding a cantaloupe aloft against the morning sun, Michelangelo singing a garbled version of the _Lion King_ opening song behind him.

“Shhh. No.” She unbuckled her seatbelt and slipped beside me, gently pressing my head against her shoulder. She had hard arms and a hard side, and when she leaned against me, an obscured sheath dug into my hip.

I shrank away. “This wasn’t supposed to happen!” I said. “How did you even find me?”

“We've known about your farm for years.”

My mouth fell open.

“Don’t touch my family,” I said in a strangled voice. “If you hurt them, I’ll never forgive you.”

“My dear, I have already forgotten that they exist,” she said. “And so should you.”

**

We only stopped for food once we had passed the state line. Mom cracked the window only long enough to give our order at a drive-through. I wolfed down my cheeseburger. For the first time, I saw disapproval on her face.

“Did he teach you no manners?” she asked.

“I’m hungry,” I said through a mouthful of mashed bread.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full. Don’t take such big bites.” She dabbed at my face with a napkin.

I swallowed with effort. “But I’m hungry!”

Anger flashed across her face. “No one is going to take it from you. Eat slowly.”

I pointedly crammed a handful of French fries into my face, cheeks bulging like a hamster’s, and glared at her. I regretted this immediately. She popped me right in the throat with the edge of her hand. Gagging, I spat French fries all over my lap.

“Do not ever do that again.” Her voice was cold. “One at a time. Slowly. Savor them.”

Coughing, I leaned away. When I reached gingerly down for the half-chewed food on my lap, she batted my hand away and scooped the remnants into the paper bag.

“One by one,” she said.

“But they’re still goo…”

“You are not a stray dog,” she snapped. “I will buy you more.”

I wish I could have stopped eating just to spite her. But god, I was so hungry. I slowly ate each French fry, one at a time, tears in my eyes. The stench of fast food lingered in the cab for an inordinately long time, and my throat throbbed for hours afterward.

Mom cracked the window only long enough to give the driver an address. I caught a glimpse of a small Japanese man as wrinkled as a walnut. He caught my eye without expression. I felt rather than saw his disdain.

**

Sometime around 10 AM, we broke through a thick gauntlet of trees and passed the first buildings. It was not at all the towering skyline I had envisioned, but rather a jumble of mundane office buildings and stores. I might have thought it was just another town if it hadn’t been for an overabundance of yellow cabs and one-way streets.

Then the driver turned, and the squat office buildings gave way to shining towers of steel and glass. They shot into the sky on either side, sinking the streets into a false twilight. The sky was a thin pale rectangle ahead of us, and there was no horizon, not even the suggestion of one—there was always a car in front of us, or the corner of a building, or a mass of people. Everything was concrete and pavement, and when trees appeared, they seemed frail and alien, stranded travelers set adrift in a concrete sea. A cacophony of human beings swarmed down the sidewalks, like ants crawling around the feet of giants. I looked up exactly once: the skyscrapers loomed overhead like many-eyed guardians, dizzyingly vast. My throat tightened, my head spun. I buried my face in my knees.

“Are you sick?” asked Mom.

I shook my head no.

After about an hour of stop and go traffic, our car rolled to a stop, and the doors unlocked with a click.

I seized the handle and flung the door open, kicking out of the seatbelt. For a delicious moment, my foot hit the pavement, and there was nothing that could hold me back. And then Mom’s hand clamped around my arm like a vise and she jerked me back against the car.

“Do not run,” she said in my ear.

A cacophony of sound greeted us as we stepped onto the street: honking, hundreds of people talking, the screech of tires, far-off music. The stink of vehicles and human filth and salty air filled my nostrils. I squeezed my eyes shut and clapped my free hand over my ear. Mom pushed it down.

“Do not be dramatic,” she said.

One of the cars that had been tailing us stopped not far behind, and two women in pastel dresses and ballet flats stepped out, faces wrinkled with laughter. For a second I was baffled. Then one of them pushed her hair out of her eyes and idly scanned the street. Only briefly did her gaze settle on us. She had eyes like a shark. Just down the street, another black car stopped and I saw two men in jeans and t-shirts hop out, one of them carrying a package. There was a vicious scar across his face, and his nose was crooked.

Mom pushed me. “Go on.”

“But who…”

“Elites. There is nothing to fear.” She rose to her full height and pushed me toward a brownstone shop with brightly lit windows. Little mannequins not much bigger than I was pranced and posed in the windows, clothed in pleated denim dresses and pastel-colored t-shirts and cocked hats.

“Wait!” I said. “Where are we going?”

“To find you acceptable clothes.” She pushed me through the door.

I bristled like a bathed cat. Pop music blared from the speakers, and everything was pink and cream. Pictures of perfect white girl-children posing on freshly painted porches hung on the walls beside sales posters. One girl was holding a glass of lemonade, laughing up at a woman with curly hair. Something twinged in my gut, and I looked away.

I met the eyes of an employee, a woman arranging dresses on a rack. She twitched at first, and then a dark look passed over her face. I dropped my eyes to my feet, but I heard someone whisper loudly: “Ugh. People like that need to stay at home.”

My face blazed, and I hunched my shoulders. But Mom did not look left or right. She strode up to the jeans section, pushing me ahead of her.

“Stand up straight,” she said, pushing my chin up. “Do not shuffle.”

“But…”

“You are a daughter of the Foot, whose power goes back a thousand generations. These?” She jerked her chin at the employees tittering at the register. “These will grub in the mud until they die. Chin up.”

So I thrust my chin up and bit my lips so they wouldn’t shiver.

“Stop thinking about them,” Mom said softly. “Does their approval give you anything? Can they provide you with an invaluable or unique service?”

“N-no.”

“Then think on the task at hand. That is the only important thing. Now.” She swung me around by the shoulders in front of a rack of clothes. “You may choose anything you like, taste permitting.”

“Taste…?”

“You will not dress like a homeless street urchin. You will not show skin like a cheap whore.”

“Mom!” I said. My voice came out much louder than I expected, and the store grew silent.

“I don’t want to show skin,” I hissed. “I want to do the opposite of that.”

Mom cleared her throat. “Very good.”

We dug into the racks. Mom held shirts and jeans and skirts up against my body, pursed her lips. Sometimes her hand settled on my hidden shell as though to feel the contours.

“What size are you?” she asked.

Before I could answer, someone cleared their throat. When we turned, it was to see one of the employees, a toothy smile on her face. The two other workers had gathered not far away, diligently folding an already immaculate pile of clothes.

“Can I help you?” she asked Mom. She didn’t even look at me.

“I need to dress this girl in something acceptable,” Mom said. “We are doing as well as can be expected. Where are the fitting rooms?”

The employee grimaced at me with mock concern. “She… doesn’t have anything transmittable, does she?”

I glared at her beneath lowered brows.

“I will ignore your blatant disrespect only one time,” said Mom. “Where are your fitting rooms?”

“We really can’t let her put anything on if she’ll make the other customers sick,” said the employee, shrugging. “It’s a matter of public health.”

“Where is your manager?” Mom asked softly.

“I am the manager, ma’am.” She shrugged. “I’m sorry. She looks like she has a skin dise…”

I wheeled on her and I spat on her leg.

She screeched as though I’d stabbed her and staggered out of her heels. The employees squealed together, and a few watching customers chattered nervously. Mom’s hand fell on my shoulder. I froze, shoulders rigid, waiting for her nails to dig into my neck.

Instead, she threw her head back and laughed and laughed and laughed. She lifted the clothes she was holding and dropped them into a pastel pile on the floor, and swaggered as she pushed me out of the door.

**

We wandered through more clothing stores than I could count. At first I was overwhelmed by the colors and sounds and smells, so much so that I could only hear every third word that Mom said. There were more cold words, cold eyes, snickering and tittering, but they were only background sound. I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

The first changing room we went to, I forgot that Mom hadn’t seen my shell until I pulled off my shirt. Then she took a deep breath and turned me in a circle.

“What happened here?” she said, and rubbed her thumb on one of my scutes. I looked over my shoulder into the mirror.

“Baseball bat,” I said.

She hissed through her teeth, checking each scute with officious fingers. I twitched.

“Stop!” I said. “I’m okay. It’s armor. I had a bruise for like, a week.”

She muttered in Japanese and turned me around again. I glowered up at her.

“I’m okay. It was just once. We didn’t get into fights on purpose.”

“And what is this?” she said, running a finger along a dulled scar on my plastron.

“I tripped and fell on a railroad tie,” I said. “We weren’t even fighting that time. I was just clumsy. It’s okay.”

“It is not okay.”

I grabbed her hand and turned her arm over. “Then what about this?” I asked, baring one of the long white scars.

Her arm tensed; corded muscle shifted under her skin. “That is business, which you are not old enough to know.” She grabbed a shirt off of the bench. “Now put this on.”

We bought five whole bags at that store—socks and underwear and pants and shirts and dresses. Mom made me put on one of the new outfits—a pair of capris with rhinestones on the pockets, a floral pink shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons. When we checked out, she pinched April’s windbreaker and Shadow’s hand-me-down pants between thumb and forefinger, then offered them to the employee.

“Will you throw these away?” she asked.

I watched them go in the trash with a pang in my chest.

Then she pushed me outside and tossed the bags into the backseat of a waiting black car, offering a curt set of instructions in Japanese; and then we marched to another store.

“But don’t we have enough clothes now?” I asked.

She looked me over and frowned. “No.”

We filled three more bags. I wasn’t even sure if I liked half of what I pointed out. I’d never really thought about clothes before, only in terms of whether or not they fit or hid my shell. When I looked in the mirror at my nice-fitting new jeans and clean pink shirt, I felt odd and detached, like I was looking at an entirely different person. I wasn’t sure that I liked her face: she looked sullen and uncertain.

When my stomach grumbled, we settled down against the back wall of a little café and ate sandwiches and salads. I was careful to only take one bite at a time and chew with my mouth closed. She didn’t seem to notice, instead looking off into the distance at something only she could see.

More stores, more insipid music, more employees who either wouldn’t look at me or looked too long, more flashes of Mom’s shiny black credit card. In the furniture store, we bought a bed, a mattress, a nightstand, a desk, a dresser. Home décor: lamps, a clock, bedsheets, pillows. Electronic store: a bunch of movies, TV, DVD player, a smartphone, a desktop computer, a laptop, a tablet, all the latest products without even checking the prices. Then there were tennis shoes, ballet flats, a pair of stuffy patent leather Mary Janes, a host of socks (some with lace, some ankle-high athletics, some garish pairs with goofy frog faces that I pointed at only to test Mom’s limits). My old tennis shoes with the holes in the soles—my cozy old tree-climbing pair—were casually flung into the trash. I bit my knuckles. Mom batted my hand out of my mouth.

There was only one thing that I really wanted. We had walked into a hole in the wall full of jewelry, hats with cat ears, beaded headbands, light summer scarves—a preteen girl store of some kind. A handful of hairclips shaped like butterflies caught my eye. I gingerly touched them, turning them over so the light caught the colors, then slowly dropped my hands.

“Do you like them?” Mom asked.

“Yeah, but my hair…”

“Not ‘yeah,’ ‘yes,’” she said. “Get them.”

“But Mom, my hair is too thin!” I said. “It won’t work.”

But she threw them in with the belts and headbands and hats and shooed me into the waiting car. One quick search on her phone and set of instructions to the driver, and we pulled up to a little shop with a window full of disembodied, faceless heads. It took me a minute before I realized what I was looking at.

“Wigs,” I whispered.

She didn’t have to push me into this store; I sprinted ahead of her. I gaped around me: every style, every color, every consistency, in human hair and artificial fiber. When the shopkeeper brought down a little wig that fit me perfectly, a dark brown affair that hugged my face just right, I blushed and ran my fingers through the fibers with reverential fingers. A totally different person stared back at me from the mirror. She wasn’t pretty, no, I couldn’t think that, not even then. But she made sense all of a sudden. She had an actual face. She looked like a human being.

The shopkeeper squeezed my shoulders.

“Oh, darling,” he said, “you look beautiful.”

**

By the time the sun disappeared behind the skyscrapers, I couldn’t recognize myself. I stretched out in the back seat of the car with my new wig on, a pink butterfly clip just above my ear. I couldn’t stop staring at my reflection, this stranger with the matching shirt and pants and the pretty white shoes. Every now and then I reached up and tugged at my hair.

We stopped in a gated parking garage, and Mom hustled me out, her hand on my back.

“Shouldn’t we get our packages?” I asked.

“Someone will bring them up. Come, now.” She pushed me toward a glass elevator, slipped a card into a slot and pressed a button. The elevator lifted off with a soft hum.

“Where are the other floor buttons?” I asked.

“This is a private elevator,” she said, and leaned back. “It leads to my apartment.”

My eyes bulged. “Is it a penthouse apartment?”

She smiled indulgently at me. “Yes. It is a penthouse apartment.”

At that moment, the elevator broke out of the parking garage roof. I pressed my face against the glass and watched the city fall away beneath me. It stretched as far as the eye could see, a Babylon of jeweled lights and glittering windows. The Milky Way did not bare its face here; the sky was a starless haze. Instead, it seemed as though all the stars had lit on the earth. Like, I realized, I had switched places somehow: left the dark hollows of Northampton, where the stars were a faraway rumor, and flown up to the sky to live upside-down.

Mom set her hand on my back, and said nothing.

“What are we doing tomorrow?” I asked.

“A doctor’s visit,” she said. “You must have a full checkup.”

I shuddered and shook my head.

Her eyes flashed. “No one will hurt you there.”

“Is it the Bunker?” I asked.

“It is the Bunker.” Her voice was sharp.

“I’m not going.”

“You do not have a choice.”

“I don’t have to stay,” I hissed. “I can leave anytime.”

“And I will find you.” She smiled.

My heart went cold, and I turned back to the skyscape. Her reflection towered over me, towered over the faraway blink of the Empire State Building. The girl in the reflection looked down at her hands and tried to think of murder and couldn’t.

“Your father has lied to you,” she said at last. “The Bunker is not a wicked place. In fact, it is the only place where you will find a doctor who will know how to treat you.”

“I’m healthy.”

“You’re too small for your age. You may be malnourished. There may be hormonal imbalances.” She pinched at my arms. “Too skinny.”

The elevator shivered to a stop, and its doors drifted open. We stepped into an antechamber where four black-clad men stood, their hands relaxing on the hilts of their katana. They inclined their heads as we passed. Mom nodded to them and pushed me ahead of her.

She slipped her keycard into the door, and we stepped into another foyer, this one with a recess in the floor. I could hear the faint hum of an air conditioner, a refrigerator. There were a pair of men’s tennis shoes sitting at the bottom of the step, and house slippers sitting on top of it.

Suddenly a hunched little Japanese woman swept around the corner, bowing repeatedly, saying something rapidly in a concerned tone. Mom nodded back and then they had a full conversation right there in front of me while I stood there and felt increasingly stupid. My eyes flashed from the tennis shoes to the kitchen just beyond. The shifting colored lights of a television flashed on the ceiling in what must have been a living room.

“Saya,” said Mom suddenly, “this is Fujita-san, our housekeeper. She’s been hard at work preparing your room.”

“Oh,” I said. “Uh… _arigatou_.”

“ _Arigatou gozaimasu_ ,” Mom said, carefully enunciating.

I slurred it out and grimaced. But Ms. Fujita only smiled and bowed.

“Don’t worry. You’ll learn it soon enough.” Mom jerked her chin at the recess in the floor. “Take off your shoes.”

“Take off my… why?”

“This is the _genkan_ ,” she said. “Take off your shoes and leave them here. Do not wear them in the apartment.”

“What? Why?”

She smiled, but when she spoke, her voice was bitter. “Americans may drag their dirty feet all over their houses, but we do not have to.”

Indignation surged up in my chest, but I swallowed it.

“Oh,” I said, and kicked off my new tennis shoes.

“ _Kirei_ ,” Ms. Fujita said, smiling, gesturing at my shoes.

“She told you that your shoes were pretty.”

“ _Arigatou gozaimasu_ ,” I said, or something like it.

“Straighten them,” Mom said. “Turn them around; then you can just step into them when you leave. Good. Ah, house slippers… I knew I was forgetting something. Your socks will do for now.” She put on the slippers and pulled me over the step. Ms. Fujita tailed us.

I had never seen an apartment so clean in my entire life. The kitchen looked like a show room, every cabinet with an untarnished brass knob, the sink shiny enough to see my reflection in, everything organized by size and brand and color, everything sterile from the floor to the picture frames on the wall. Just ahead was what I supposed was the living room—a room with sofas and a spotless white carpet. Just looking at it made me itch.

A sullen face rose above the edge of the sofa, phone casting a ghostly light against the jut of his chin. A boy. He was probably in his early teens, with close-cropped hair and a surly expression. His eyes narrowed.

“Who are you?” he said.

Mom flipped the light on. We stared at each other in horrified fascination.

“Takeru, this is Saya.” Mom looked at me. “Your sister.”

“My…” He threw himself to his feet. “You mean it’s true? You really…” His eyes locked on mine. “Oh my god. She looks just like the pictures.” He uttered something in Japanese, low and strained.

Mom said a word so sharp that he winced and sat down.

“I’m glad to see you, too,” I grumbled.

“Yeah, well. Just don’t talk to me,” Takeru said.

“Fine,” I said.

Mom hissed under her breath. “You will not argue.” She turned her hard eyes on Takeru’s, and he looked away.

Ms. Fujita bowed and padded off down the hall.

“You would have grown up with her, had circumstances been different,” Mom said.

He shrugged. “But I didn’t.”

“It’s late.” Mom jerked her chin toward the hallway. “Get to bed.”

He sullenly turned off the TV and stormed down the hallway, slamming his door.

“He will need time,” Mom said.

I noted the tone in her voice, because I realized it was the sound she made when she lied.

She led me into the hallway, adjusting decor as she walked, and then into a little bedroom across from Takeru’s. Ms. Fujita was there, straightening out my comforter. All of my furniture had been assembled, the lamp and clock were on, the computers were set up on the desk. My closet doors hung open, and all of my new clothes hung there, neatly arranged with the tags removed. Everything smelled fresh and untested: showroom floors, stores, the chemical stink of treated leather and new plastic. I shuffled to the window and stared out. The whole city, like an endless maze, stretching and stretching and stretching into infinity…

“Breakfast is at eight,” Mom said.

“Oh.”

“After that, I will take you to the doctor. And after that, we will meet with tutors to ascertain your education level and we will form a lesson plan. I expect you are behind.” She paused. “You will need a shower.”

“Where’s that?”

“I’ll show you,” she said.

**

The apartment was even bigger than the farmhouse. Mom’s room was at the end of the hallway, with a bed big enough for four people to sleep in. There was a dining room, a huge library, a tatami-mat room, and a little exercise room with a stand of weights. The living room and kitchen were decorated with a few glass cases of fine pottery, dolls, and calligraphy. Both the tile and the carpet was a brilliant white. It was the kind of place you didn’t want to raise your voice in, with chairs you didn’t want to sit in, and a carpet you didn’t want to walk on… like those houses the ancients used to build for the spirits.

The only place I did not get a good glimpse of was the tatami-mat room. There was a huge cabinet in it with the doors shut, and what looked like a small shrine at eye level with a pair of photographs sitting on it; but then Mom shut the door and told me to move on.

My favorite part was the bathroom. Each room had its own. The entire room was a shower, with a rough grid surface to stand on, and the bathtub was so deep that I could practically swim laps in it. I wondered as I scrubbed at my shell with a bath brush: had Dad ever been here? And if he had, how could he have missed that Karai had a son?

When I slipped out, padding barefoot into my new room, Takeru was waiting for me in the hall. Under the dim yellow light, his skin looked sallow, translucent.

I glowered at him from beside my bed. “You got a problem?”

“Yes. The fact you’re even alive.” His eye flashed to the end of the hall, where Mom had disappeared into her room. “Is it true? Your father is a turtle-man?”

I pulled my bathrobe down, exposing the jointed plates on my chest. “What do you think?”

He hissed through his teeth and looked away, over his shoulder. “No.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t ask for you, either.”

“Just don’t act like you know me.” His brows knotted up, he closed his eyes. “Don’t talk to my friends. Don’t… don’t do anything public, for the love of god.”

“I do whatever I want,” I said. “And I’m not staying. I’m leaving.”

He paused. “You are?”

“Yeah, the minute she blinks.”

“It’s no use. She’ll catch you.” He sucked on his bottom lip, staring at me thoughtfully.

“You mean you’ve tried?”

“Yeah, lots of times. You’ll think you covered your bases, but…” He glanced up at her doorway. “Come with me.”

He turned into his bedroom and held the door open. I dropped my dirty clothes next to my door and crept in after him, tensed and scanning everything.

It was a room that could have been anyone’s. He had the same array of electronics that I did, plus posters of Bruce Lee and rock bands, and a shelf full of manga and anime. Unlike Shadow’s room, it was clean; but books were set at odd angles or halfway pulled out, and there were a couple of socks on the floor, scuffs on the door, a slightly wrinkled bed sheet. To the untrained eye, reasonable imperfection. To the clever one, blatant rebellion.

He shut the door after him and dropped onto his bed, then gestured at his chair.

“So?” I sat down.

“So you want to get out?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He lifted his head. “Then take me with you.”

I laughed. “If you don’t like turtle-men, you won’t like where I’m going.”

“I didn’t mean I’d go with you everywhere. I just need to get away from _her_.”

“So she’s like this all of the time?”

“You have no idea.” He crammed his fist into the palm of his hand. There was a tense silence.

“Did… you grow up in Japan?” I asked.

“Only when I was really small. She brought me back up when I was five or so. I barely even remember the place.” He was really focused on his hands, cracking his knuckles, twisting his fingers.

“So… who’s your father?”

“An Elite. It’s why she hates me.” He glared up at the ceiling. “I had to find it out for myself, too. She wouldn’t tell me at all.”

“But how’d…”

“I paid a hacker to crack her computer,” he said. “Turns out my father was one of five Elites who tried to kill her in this failed coup or something.” His eyes were miserable. “Your… your dad was there. Whatever he is. And he’s the only reason she’s alive.”

I sat up straight, clenching the arms of the chair.

Takeru was still looking at his knees. “I talked to a lot of people who knew my father, and it turns out that he was this easygoing, friendly guy, you know? Fantastic ninja, one of the best martial artists in the country, maybe even the world. He wanted to see me, and she wouldn’t let him. He only joined the coup so he could get me back. So she killed him.” He glared up at me.

“Two against five Elites?” I asked. “I don’t believe it.”

“The freak sniffed out the plot and tailed her on a mission, then got three of them from behind. So it ended up being a fair fight, I guess. Who knows.” He knotted his fingers again. “Maybe your father killed mine. She probably liked that.”

“Ugh.” I squirmed in the chair. “Don’t talk like that.”

“I wanted to kill her for a long time.” He opened his hands. “But I’m not good enough.”

“Me neither.” I chewed on my forefinger. “Why would she do this?”

“I don’t know. Why would she sleep with a creepy mutant freak?”

“He’s not creepy.”

“Maybe only ‘cause you’re creepy.”

“Maybe.” I leaned back against the chair. “I don’t care. Whatever happened, I’d rather be with Dad.”

“Maybe he’s not there anymore,” he said, squeezing his hands into a fist.

Suddenly I felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest. The memory from that morning of the Elite slapping the top of the black car, the abject terror on Shadow’s face.

“But… Mom gave her word.”

“She’s Foot, stupid.” He was biting the insides of his cheeks. “She’s probably searching your old hiding place right now with a whole squad of ninjas.”

“They can’t be dead,” I snapped. “My uncles are great ninjas. Plus, if she did that I would never forgive her.”

“You think she cares about that?” he asked.

I bit down on my knuckles and rocked back and forth.

“You mental?” he asked.

“No, I’m thinking,” I snapped.

“This was a mistake.” He stood up. “Get out.”

I threw myself to my feet and shoved his chair back. “Fine with me.”

I stalked into my room, slammed the door, and locked it. When I turned to look out of the window, I began to itch all over. A hollow terror began in the pit of my stomach. If I had been back at Northampton, I would have been able to travel the Milky Way. Now my only astral companion was the moon, a mere sickle in the sky.

I pressed my nose against the glass and looked my reflection in the face. She looked worried. After a moment’s consideration, I rolled back on my bed, and lifted my new wig off of its stand, then put it on. When I looked back at my reflection, the new me looked back with a fierce frown.

“You can leave at any time,” I told her. “All you have to do is walk back to Northampton. You can check all of the farm roads until you figure out which house is which. You have plenty of time, after all.”

My reflection stared back at the full closet, the pile of electronics, the plush bed, the locked door… the beautiful wig, the glittery butterfly clip. Then the tiny room. The tiny, tiny room, the tiny, tiny apartment, and outside, vast alien spaces, sheer drops, a stinking, whistling wind: no trees, no horizons, only a mewed manmade maze. Suddenly a fire flared up in my chest and I felt like I could have taken all the walls down myself.

I thought of the laughter in the living room, the family crunched together around the dinner table, April leaning back in the porch swing with her legs kicked back, the house in all its easygoing glory: leaking, stretched thin, chipped paint, stained floors. Suddenly it all seemed very far away. Worse than that, it felt like a fiction.

“You can leave at any time,” I told my reflection.

She narrowed her eyes and nodded.


	11. Chapter 11

I was in the dining room by seven forty-five, dressed complete with wig, my back flat against the chair. And what a chair! It looked more like the set piece for an emperor's dining room. The cushion was crimson with flora embroidered in gold thread. The back had been elegantly carved into the likenesses of two twisting phoenixes with gilded detailing, each of their feathers a different kind of polished wood.

It was also hard as hell. I shifted constantly. Finally, I started sitting on my hands.

Ms. Fujita clanked around in the kitchen. The minute she noticed that I was there, she started talking: simply, slowly, like I was an idiot. When she finally emerged, holding a silver tray, she was still talking: a sweet, pleasant, happy sound, like a little bird greeting the sunshine.

A hand settled on the back of my head, and Mom replied in Japanese. Ms. Fujita beamed, bowed, and approached the table, setting the tray down. It was a spotless silver affair. The plates, I noted with a small twinge of wariness, were remarkably small. There were bowls of rice, strange little dishes of vegetables, miso soup, fish. Ms. Fujita began arranging the tray into two places at the table: dishes for me, dishes for Mom. Mom took a bowl of rice.

“Japanese is the first language you will learn,” she said, reclining in the seat opposite from me. “And when you do begin to learn, I will expect you to use it at all times.”

I glanced back at the corridor, but Takeru did not appear.

“Takeru will not be joining us. He leaves early for school.” Mom still hadn’t looked up. Suddenly I realized she hadn’t looked at me since she stepped into the room. I thought of my conversation with Takeru and wondered if she had bugged his room.

“Mom.” I looked up at her, setting my jaw. “If you hurt my family and I find out…”

She flung her head up. Her eyes were blazing. I nearly choked on my own breath.

“The past is the past,” she said. “What happened there stays there.”

I took a deep breath. “Please.”

Her eyes were flinty. “’They,’” she said, with a nasty punctuated note, “are not your family. They were thieves.”

“Were?” I jumped up. “You mean you attacked them _anyway?_ When? Why?”

"Calm down. They are not dead yet."

_"What?"_

“They did not surrender you.” Her hands were trembling. “Just as you did not come of your own free will. Why should they be rewarded?”

“You know what Dad said?” I snapped.

“I do not remotely care.”

“He said he wouldn’t have taken me if you’d just let me see him,” I said. “That’s all he wanted. But you couldn’t even give him an hour a week or… or whatever it was. You pushed him. It was your fault.”

“Thus far, I have let you say anything you desired,” Mom said, leaning back in her chair. “If you persist in saying foolish things, you will not like the outcome. Now sit down.”

I flopped into my seat. It hurt.

“Japanese,” Mom said to herself, “and manners.”

**

The Bunker was a nondescript office building on the edge of town. A faded sign announced that it was the Watanabe Shipping Company. Blinds hung askew in the tinted windows, and the parking lot was filled with nondescript cars. Mom didn’t speak to me all morning, which normally I would have preferred—but this time, the silence was heavy and terrible. When her hand fell on my shoulder, it was heavy, and her fingers pinched like a falcon’s claws.

The foyer was very small and much plainer than I expected. A few faded photos of landscapes hung on the wall in basic black frames, and there was a muted flatscreen on the wall tuned to CNN. A single ratty man sat in one of the threadbare chairs, his feet flung up on a battered coffee table, a cap down over his eyes.

The receptionist looked up from her phone call and blanched. But Mom didn’t look at her. She nodded to the man in the chair, who lifted a single crooked finger in response. Then we walked through a door labeled “Employees Only,” and were in a plain white hallway lined with offices.

I could feel that roof pressing down on me like a shoe on a beetle's back. Dad had laid out a map of the place for me to memorize when I was very small, and it startled me to actually recognize the layout. I could hear his voice in my head narrating the lay of the building: "These are offices for lab employees. Here's financial. Here's HR..."

What a dreadfully silent place it was. All you could hear was the hum of the lights and the air conditioning. We met no one, but I heard doors closing far away and hurried footsteps rushing in the opposite direction. Our own footsteps echoed back at us over the tiles and our reflections shivered below us as though on water. Mom took what seemed to be a hundred turns, and it was hard to keep myself oriented. We wandered down a random stairwell that only seemed to exist for one floor, although the office building had obviously had at least six stories. Then she slipped a keycard into a card reader for what appeared to be an office, but when we opened the door, we stepped into an elevator. Another keycard swipe, and she pressed a button labeled B3. There were six Bs, I noticed, and six upper floors besides.

"Beware the basement levels," Dad had said.

I shivered. Her grip only tightened.

“It is nothing to be afraid of,” she said.

“They experiment on things down here,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Only things,” she said. “Never people.”

The door opened onto another maze of corridors. This time, however, there was an old woman in a white lab coat standing before us, a crooked grin on her face. She had bound her salt-and-pepper hair back with a purple hair tie, and had dramatic laugh lines.

“Good morning, Ms. Watanabe,” she said.

“Good morning, Dr. Hernandez.” She pushed me forward. “This is Saya.”

“Saya, ah. Good to meet you at last.” She reached out; I gingerly gave her my hand. She did not shake it very hard, instead opting to press the back of my hand with a thumb.

“Let’s see what’s going on with you, shall we?” she asked, and gently led me down the corridor. Mom’s claws released. Even though she still walked behind us, suddenly I felt like I could breathe.

I was weighed and my height was measured. Dr. Hernandez and another doctor took X-rays of my entire body, a process that seemed to take an infinity. Then I had to disrobe in a sterile white room with humming lights and take off my wig. I couldn’t look Dr. Hernandez in the eye as I set it on top of my shirt.

“This is incredible,” she said softly, gently lifting one of my arms. “I can’t believe she’s alive. Simmons and Takehara are geniuses, to be sure, but two species like this…” She whistled.

“They told me it would have been twice as hard if the father did not already possess mammalian traits,” Mom said. “Apparently his transformation involved human DNA.”

“This is still incredible. I just can’t believe everything works so well. What I wouldn’t give to get my hands on some of that mutagenic agent and see what we could cook up here!” She smiled up at me. “You’re a real miracle, Saya. I just want you to know that.”

I looked at my feet.

“Why does her skin look like this?” Mom asked, pressing my arm. “Like sharkskin. And why is she still so small?”

“Nothing we can’t test for,” Dr. Hernandez said.

So I was pinched and prodded and scraped and swabbed. Then the needle came out. Dr. Hernandez told me to look away so that she could draw blood.

“You won’t feel it that way,” she said, and winked. This was only halfway true.

Then Dr. Hernandez looked at my ears, my eyes, down my throat. At last, I was flipped on my back on the table. When I realized what was about to happen, I clapped my tail down and stared red-faced at the ceiling. Dr. Hernandez was full of apologies at first; then there was a concerned silence.

“Hmm,” she said. “I need to look at her internal organs and see how they integrated. It will give us a better glimpse of how she works and what might not be working correctly.”

My heart thudded. “But I feel fine.”

“Then you are probably all right.” Dr. Hernandez patted me on the shoulder. “But in your case, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Let’s schedule an MRI for tomorrow afternoon.”

**

Dr. Hernandez talked to Mom outside the room while I put my clothes on. When Mom grabbed me by the shoulder and steered me down the hall, her grip was looser, her face was paler.

“What happened?” I asked in the elevator. “What’s wrong with me?”

“It is impossible to tell.” She looked away. “You will have to fast until your appointment tomorrow.”

My stomach grumbled. “What?”

“Fast. You won’t eat.”

“But how am I different?”

“We will find out tomorrow,” she said.

“If you don’t like that I’m a mutant, why’d you do this?” I asked. “You could’ve had a human baby with no problems.”

She didn’t answer me.

**

My stomach grumbled forever. It grumbled as I met the tutors. It grumbled when I was given water. It grumbled at gum especially.

When I showered I wondered how I was different. I certainly tried to look, although it’s impossible for me to see anything. I can’t bend over terribly far and the ridge of my plastron hangs down; I haven’t even seen my own tail. Dad had to change my diaper—he would have had to know—but of course, this isn’t something you bring up in civilized conversation. It must not have been something he worried about, or he would have told me, wouldn’t he?

 _Why_ , I wondered, _did it have to be_ this? _And_ there?

I turned on my new computer and tried to access the internet. It wasn’t set up. So I went and knocked on Takeru’s door.

“What?” he asked, peeking out of the crack.

“I need the Wi-Fi password.”

“I can’t give it to you.”

“Please, come on!”

But he slammed the door on me.

So I slipped into Mom’s library because I’d seen a computer there.

No luck. Password protected. So I turned to the shelves, which stretched to the ceiling on each side. It was full of books, and almost all of them were in Japanese. My heart sank. No way to tell in a glance what I was looking at. So I began to pull them out by the spines and look at the pictures.

“What are you doing here?” Mom asked.

I whirled around. She was standing at the door in a silk robe, a glass of wine hooked in her fingers.

“Looking for a book,” I said in a low voice.

She strode past me to the desk at the window. “For what?”

“Anatomy,” I said. “I can’t get on the internet, so I thought…”

She set her wine down. “A human woman has three openings. A turtle has a cloaca, which is… ah… all-purpose. You have that.” She practically spat out the word.

“Oh.” I sighed and relaxed. “So I’m like Dad.”

“This is not a good sign,” she said sharply. “Your height may be due to the malfunction of your internal organs.”

“Dad is short, too,” I said. “Maybe I’m just like him.”

“No,” she said. “Something isn’t right.”

“For a human, maybe,” I said, squatting to peer at the lowest part of the bookcase. “But I’m not a human.”

“We shall see,” she said coolly.

“If you wanted a human baby so much, you should’ve kept Takeru,” I said without looking at her.

She didn’t say anything, although I heard her chair creak. Then I heard the soft beeping of a phone, and her clearing her throat.

The minute I heard his voice I whirled around, my eyes bugging out. She held a thin black cell phone in front of her, but she wasn't looking at it. She was looking at me. His voice came out of the speaker, fuzzy, but distinct.

“Karai,” he said. “What do you want?”

“Dad!” I rushed to the desk.

“Saya? Is that you? Are you all right?”

“Yeah! Yeah, I’m fine!” I said. “Gimme the phone!”

Mom’s lip twitched. “Have you taught your daughter nothing but insolence?”

“No. She developed that on her own.”

I thought I heard Mike laughing in the background, and suddenly I was hit by homesickness so hard that I thought I was going to throw up. I stretched out over the desk, waggling my hands.

“Please, Mom, please! Let me talk to him.”

She grudgingly held the phone out to me. I ripped it out of her hands and scuttled behind a bookcase.

“Dad! Is everyone okay?”

“We’re fine. Don’s got us covered on all fronts. Why do you ask?”

“I think she knows where you are,” I said.

“We’ll keep that in mind.” He breathed a long sigh. “God, I’m so glad… she hasn’t taken you to the Bunker, has she?”

“She took me this morning,” I said. “She says she’s worried about my growth.” I glanced around the corner of the bookcase. She was swirling her wine with an unreadable expression.

“Told you,” Raph said in the background.

“Don’t let her do anything you aren’t comfortable with,” Dad said. “Fight if you have to.”

“I don’t think she is,” I said. “She just gave me a checkup, and tomorrow they scan all of my insides. She doesn’t like how much I’m like you.”

“What a surprise,” he said drily.

“But… she did buy me a wig.” I swallowed. “She bought me all kinds of clothes, and a computer, and a TV.”

“She did?” His voice warmed. “What does the wig look like?”

“Dark brown and down to my chin, and I put a pink clip in it. I wish I could show it to you.”

“I wish I could see it.”

I gulped. “I wish I were home.”

“Then keep practicing,” he said. “Practice hard. Let Karai teach you. She’s one of…”

Suddenly the phone was jerked out of my hand.

“Hey!” I said.

Mom slipped the phone up to her ear. “Do not get comfortable. I know where you are in Northampton.” She looked down at me; Dad’s voice was obscured against her cheek. “The camper was bugged.”

Silence.

“I am aware of everything you do,” she said. “The minute that Saya goes missing is the minute your entire pathetic farm goes up in a fireball.”

“No!” I leapt up. “No, don’t do that, don’t…”

“Karai.” Dad’s voice was heavy. “For Saya’s sake, please.”

“If you do that, I’ll kill you!” I said, and I swung at her.

The next thing I knew, I was lying flat on my back with ringing ears, and her foot was on my throat. For the first time, I saw raw feeling on her face—mingled panic and rage. Dad was shouting something over the phone that I couldn’t quite understand.

“You did this!” Mom hissed. “You stole her away, you turned her against me. You told her nothing but lies, and now she does not respect me, she does not listen to me.”

“Of course she doesn’t! You can’t rule everyone with an iron fist! Listen to her. Talk to her. Buy her more things. Take her to the zoo or the library or… anywhere. Take her anywhere. Just… don’t hit her again, for the love of god!”

The look on her face smoothed out and then was gone. She closed her eyes.

“Please, listen to me,” Dad said. “I’ve been wrong. I’ve done some foolish things.”

“Yes.”

“Kidnapping her was… one of those things.”

Her eyes flashed open. “Yes.”

“But don’t punish me through her. It doesn’t make sense, Karai.”

She lifted her foot and I squirmed away. “Your daughter threatened to kill me.”

“She’s more like you than me,” he said. “She wanted to kill Raphael, too. Meet someone who causes problems, take them out. End the problem before it begins.”

My heart went out of me and I stuffed my fist into my mouth.

“Please, be good to her,” he said. “Please. I will help in any way I can.”

Her brow furrowed. “You? You were never supposed to be involved.”

“Maybe not, but I was. Look. She loves us. She’ll listen to us. We can help her transition. Just don’t kill anybody.”

“I don’t want to transition,” I said in a low voice.

“Do you hear me, Saya?” he asked. “Everybody’s lives are riding on this. Do what she says.”

“But Dad!”

Mom held the phone out until it stood between us, a thin black totem.

“I’ve had ten years with you, which is more than I ever expected,” Dad said. “You’re smart; you can take care of yourself. I know without a doubt that you can.”

“But I want to go home!” I flung myself to my feet. “I don’t want to stay here! Nobody likes me here!”

“No! Lower your voice,” Dad said. “How old are you?”

“…ten.”

“You know more about patience than I did at your age,” he said. “Be patient. Wait. Watch. Use your head. Do what is best for yourself. You should only come home if your life or health is threatened. Do you understand?”

“So if Mom hits me?” I asked.

He hissed. Mom clenched her hand into a fist.

“She won’t hit you,” he said firmly. “She was… just… surprised.”

“I’ll learn to fight back.” I looked Mom in the eye.

“No!” Dad said. “Karai, I swear that I won’t encourage this. Just don’t… don’t ever do that again.”

She raised the phone to her ear, turned the speakerphone off, and started speaking in Japanese. Very slowly. Very measured. She turned and stared off into the New York skyline. I crept up behind her, straining to hear, but Dad was speaking in Japanese, too. She leaned on the desk and hung her head.

When she dropped the phone, I saw that she hadn’t ended the call yet.

“Go to bed,” she said.

“What did he say?”

“What does it matter?” She touched my cheek. “I apologize. It won’t happen again. Go to bed.”

Before I shut the door behind me, she raised the phone to her ear.


	12. Chapter 12

Mom had me sit down at the table for breakfast. It was with wide eyes and a grumbling stomach that I watched Ms. Fujita fix the single meal in the kitchen. When she came into the dining room to drop off the food, Ms. Fujita gasped over my cheek and touched it with her papery hands. She told me many things that I didn’t understand in a concerned voice. I told her “thank you” a lot, but she shook her head. When Mom entered the room, clothed in a black pinstripe suit, Ms. Fujita turned on her and said a great many more things, rapidly and with feeling. Mom bent her head, touched my cheek. Her reply to Ms. Fujita was reserved. Ms. Fujita bowed and didn’t say anything for the rest of the meal.

“Are you all right?” Mom asked me. Her voice was hoarse.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve had worse.”

“Your father is coming to New York,” she said, sitting down across from me.

I froze. “He is?”

“It will be a reward for you.” She poured her tea. “Once a month, in Central Park. If you are good.”

“What about my uncles?”

She coughed. “Perhaps.”

“I want to see Mike and Don.”

“We shall discuss it.” She covered her mouth.

“Are you sick?”

“No.” She poured tea for me—green tea. I wrinkled my nose. Quickly, she realized she had erred, and drew it away.

“What else did he say?” I asked, staring at her rice.

“That,” she said, “is our business.”

**

Dr. Hernandez and another doctor shunted me through a clanking, rattling white doughnut that took detailed images of all my insides, a process that seemed to take an infinity. When we left the Bunker, Mom treated me to a nice restaurant. We ate soup and overpriced baked chicken with our backs to the wall. I was getting better at picking out the Elites, but only because I remembered their faces. There were the two girls again, the ones who had been in pastel dresses; now they were in business suits and their hair was up, and they looked for all the world like they were high-powered executives on a lunch break. There was the man with the broken nose, except now he was with two other men and a woman, and if their sleeves fell back you could see scars and the evidence of broken wrists and fingers.

“How many Elites do you have?” I asked softly.

“Enough,” Mom said.

“But who would try to kill you?”

“Oh, I have many enemies here. The American Mafia and their ilk, the Russian mob, the Yakuza, some South American and Chinese elements, some governments. It goes on and on.”

I shuddered. “Would they kill me?”

“If they wanted to die slowly.” She smiled and sipped her tea.

“But couldn’t they shoot us from far away?”

“They could try.”

“What does that mean?”

“I have enough money to protect us.” She squeezed my hand under the table. Her palm was as rough as Dad’s.

“Then… if you can keep off all of these big criminal organizations, why didn’t you just destroy the farm?” I asked.

She paused. “I didn’t want to.”

“Why not?”

She began slicing her chicken into even quadrants. “You would have fled again, and into the woods, at that. We know there are tunnels, but we just don’t know how many or where they open. Usually we could scan the ground for temperature differences, but they are maintained at the same temperature as the surrounding earth. We thought about launching a miniature EMP bomb onto the premises, but… the result would be messy. The outcome uncertain.” She shrugged. “I suggested we wait until you left.”

“You… you knew I would leave?”

“Eventually. Two young girls eventually get up to no good. Then no fighting, no bloodshed, just an easy pickup and a getaway. I like my Elites, and I hate to waste them.”

Swallowing my chicken was like swallowing sandpaper.

“Don’t worry. This life is still new to you.” Mom leaned back and dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “Give it time.”

I looked at her, incredulous, because those were clearly Dad’s words, not hers.

**

After Mom returned me to the apartment, she told me she had business to attend to and was gone. Then Fujita-san directed me to the level just downstairs, a series of meeting rooms and offices. Just like that, I was thrown on the mercy of a tutor of the Japanese language—a small, wiry man who never smiled and snapped if I so much as hiccupped. After that was a tutor of English, a cinnamon-haired older lady with a lisp, and after that, an owl-eyed geriatric who taught math. I was given some rudimentary tests. Staring at papers, as it turns out, is not my strong suit. All that time, I had thought I could read; I could sit down with a whole novel and read it in a few hours. Then I was given a textbook of dry paragraphs on Japanese history and I felt like stabbing my eyes out with my eraser.

When Takeru returned, I was sweating bullets in the living room, staring at a chapter about decimal places. He flopped on the sofa and kicked his nasty, sweaty feet up on my textbook, then turned on the TV.

I nearly snapped at him. But then I thought of Dad and the family meeting in the park. So I jerked my book out from underneath his feet without comment, picked up my pencil bag and notebook, and headed into the _tatami_ -mat room.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“A place where you aren’t,” I said, and tried to slam the paper door. I nearly knocked it out of its runners.

Just as I was about to sit down, I looked to my left and halted in my tracks. There was a cabinet standing against the wall with its doors hanging open. The inside was all gilded, and a Buddha sat in the center, legs crossed. A food offering lay before it: a heap of oranges, a bowl of cooked rice. Sitting just beside the cabinet at eye-level, there was a shelf set with an elegantly crafted miniature shrine that enclosed three calligraphy-laced papers. The shelf was framed by two photographs.

My heart stuttered. On the left-hand side was a photo of Akemi, in full ninja regalia, her foot thrust up on the edge of a roof and her head thrown back. A city lay prostrate at her feet. On the right-hand side was a photograph of me as an infant. It had to be me; no other baby could have possibly been so uniquely hideous. I looked so much like a turtle, so wrinkled and patchy-skinned, that I wondered what Mom could have possibly expected from my physical appearance as I aged. Even though I had been swaddled—and there was a chapped hand lying across my chest, probably Mom’s—you could just barely see the shell peeking up over the back of my neck.

Ms. Fujita appeared beside me and said something solemn.

“Oh my god!” I jumped away. “Fujita-san, don’t… don’t scare me like that.”

She gestured at the photos and began talking. She mimed bowing before the gilded shrine and lighting candles. I glanced over my shoulder. Takeru was not watching TV; he was glaring through the open doors. Ms. Fujita looked over and gestured at him, too.

He groaned, but he shambled in anyway.

“She wants me to tell you about the _butsudan_ and the _kamidana_ ,” he said. He pointed at the cabinet. “Buddhist.” He pointed at the shelf. “Shinto. Offerings in the morning. You shut the _butsudan_ at sunset and open it in the morning. So now you know. There.”

“Why am I here?” I said, pointing at the photo.

“I don’t know. Ask Mom.” He backed away. Ms. Fujita narrowed her eyes.

“How about you?” I asked. “Why aren’t you there?”

“Maybe because I’m not dead,” he said. He flopped back onto the couch.

“Wait,” I said, leaning on the paper door.

Ms. Fujita apologized profusely and pushed my hands off of the paper panels, then mimicked a hand punching through.

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “Um. _Sumi… sumo…_ ”

“ _Sumimasen_ ,” said Takeru.

“ _Sumimasen_ , okay. Do you not get homework or is it just me?”

He glared up at me. “Mind your own business.”

“I’m serious.”

“Yeah, maybe I don’t want to. Or need to.” He sank into the cushions. “Doesn’t matter anyway.”

“Wouldn’t Mom notice?”

“She’s been home more in these last three days than she has in the last three months,” he said.

“What?”

“She’s gone,” he said. “All the time.”

“Wait a minute!” I said. “So she wants to keep me in a little box without ever talking to me or anything?”

“You’re putting it nicer than I would,” he said.

“What about katas?” I asked. “When do we do katas?”

“I do katas after school with a tutor.” He eyed my face. “Why do you care?”

“Oh my god,” I said. “Dad made me promise to stay. I’m trying to make this not suck.”

“Some dad you’ve got.” He sneered. “Does he know she smacked you?”

“That’s none of your business.”

Ms. Fujita said something sharp. Takeru rolled his eyes, but he looked back at the TV and said nothing. Ms. Fujita pressed me back inside of the _tatami_ -mat room and closed the door. When she looked back up at me, it was with the same mild smile. She picked up my books and pencil bag and walked out a different door.

“Hey!” I rushed after her. “I need to finish that.”

She was waiting for me, and mimed shutting the door and kicking off my slippers. So I did. When I turned back around, she was trotting down a flight of stairs toward a tinkling fountain. Trees, flowers, shrubbery, and stone rose in civil arrangement on every side. We were surrounded by glass—glass walls, a glass roof—and even the tiles, white and shining, seemed translucent. It was warm, but not terribly so, and the plants whispered around me in an omnipresent breeze. You could just see the high rises between the trunks.

Ms. Fujita set my book and pencil bag down on a table sitting in front of the fountain and then pointed. There were softball-sized goldfish gathering at the edge of the pool, orange ones and calico ones with jeweled scales and white ones with red wens, lipping greedily at the surface. Their pool fed into a swimming pool lined with rushes, waterweed, and lilypads. The water was clear and green, ruffled by the breeze, water-bugs, and the odd dragonfly.

“Oh,” I said. _“Kirei.”_

Ms. Fujita nodded, patted the back of a plush chair. I sank down into the cushions and sat there staring for a while. The goldfish saw us and immediately began whipping themselves into a frenzy, struggling to push their comrades aside, every now and then violently rushing across the surface. Finally, I crossed my arms on top of my books and dropped my head into my arms.

Ms. Fujita appeared beside me with a cold glass of water, then sat down across from me and said something that sounded kind.

“I just want to go home,” I said.

She pushed something into my hand. I looked up with bleary eyes. A canister of fish food. She pointed at the goldfish, smiling.

I had no idea that goldfish were contortionists, much less fat ones, but these clearly were. They twisted over sideways and backwards for pellets, and if that didn’t work, they bowled each other over and tackled one another head-on. Ms. Fujita pointed down at them and said, “ _Kingyo_.” She smiled at me.

I returned it. “ _Kingyo_ ,” I replied.

**

I followed Ms. Fujita wherever she went. When she cleaned the kitchen, I sat on the floor nearby completing square after square of _hiragana_. When she rolled up her sleeves and scrubbed the bathroom, I sat in the hallway just outside the door. She laughed at me and pointed toward the glasshouse, but I pretended not to understand her. Instead, I showed her a page of fractions. She threw up her hands in mock distress.

I was genuinely sad to see her walk out of the door at eight. She smiled at me and bowed. Behind her, the two Elites on guard stared unashamedly at me.

“ _Itte kimasu_ ,” she said, and shut the door.

I was still up when Mom came home. She swept through, filing her nails, and paused when she saw me curled up on the sofa.

“Why aren’t you in bed?” she asked.

“Is what Takeru says true?” I asked. “You are never home?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Sometimes my job requires that I leave the country.”

“So I’m not going to practice katas with you or talk to you or anything? You’re just going to lock me in this little house and see me a few times a year?” I sat back. “I could do that and live at the farm, and be with all my uncles and…”

“No,” she said. “This is not up for debate.” She strode down the hallway.

I pattered after her. “When am I going to see Dad?”

“The end of the month.”

“You’re not lying, are you?”

“No!” She looked me up and down. “It is too late for you. Go to bed.”

“When do you practice katas?” I asked.

She laughed softly. “I practice at five.”

“Okay.”

“Five in the morning.”

“In the exercise room?”

Her laughter died, and she stared at me with a funny expression. “Yes.”

I turned, nodding. “I’ll see you then.”

**

I woke in the predawn dimness, took a deep breath, and thought hard of the farm. I could almost smell the freshly cut grass and the chilled air. Then the air conditioning kicked on, the perfumed air blew in, and the illusion was gone. I jumped to my feet. I threw on my clothes, but I left the wig on its stand.

Mom was stretching. She cracked her neck as I entered the room.

“ _Ohayou gozaimasu_ ,” she said.

I nodded.

And then I heard a soft _“ohayou!”_ from the front door.

I looked up. Ms. Fujita stood in the doorway, smiling at both of us. She set down her purse, kicked off her slippers, and padded into the room.

“Fujita-san!” I said.

And to my shock, she began stretching, too—stretching as far as her joints would allow. She smiled at me the entire time.

“She’s a ninja too?” I asked.

“ _Hai_ ,” said Fujita-san, then rattled something off.

“Fujita-san’s family has worked as our housekeepers for generations.” Mom twisted, cracking her back. “Of course they are trained in our art.”

“If I get up at five, and you’re not here… is she going to train me?”

Mom paused, looking down at me. “She could.”

“I would like that,” I said swiftly. “I would like that a lot.”

“I would prefer to oversee your training first.” Mom stood back. “Show me what you know.”

I did my best. Mom did not stop me, even when I knew I had made a mistake. She only stood against the wall with her arms crossed. I went through all the katas, from the first to the last. It took me about forty-five minutes, and by the time I was done, my arms and legs were burning.

“There,” I said, panting.

“Terrible,” she said.

Figured.

“We will start from the beginning,” she said. “Now.”

We lingered on the first kata alone for nearly an hour. Deeper stances! Don’t bend your wrist that way! Straighten out that elbow! Fujita-san had time to finish practicing, take a shower, and putter around in the kitchen before we’d finished the second one. By the end of the training session, I was sopping with sweat. When we sat down to eat, my hands were shaking as I struggled with the chopsticks.

“Poorly disciplined,” Mom said. “Poor form.” She adjusted the placement of my fingers on the chopsticks.  
  
**

Novelty is intoxicating, but like any drug, its power wanes over time. Soon my gloriously furbished room was merely a room. The huge apartment shrank. I pattered around its edges like a mouse in an aquarium. When I looked down on the faraway streets, I thought I knew what princesses in towers felt like.

I left only for appointments with Dr. Hernandez, who proclaimed my organs an utter mystery, ordered a battery of tests and x-rays, and prescribed shots and pills to help me grow. I spent more and more of my time in the glass house, feeding the goldfish and soaking up sunlight. If I stood directly in the heart of it and closed my eyes, I could imagine myself back in the boundless woods of Massachusetts.

After my third week of Japanese lessons, Mom started talking to me in short, snappy sentences, which she expected me to answer in kind. I stumbled over articles and sentence order. She glared down, implacable. Fujita-san was far more understanding. I think my happiest moment was on the fourth week, when she asked me to move my feet so she could vacuum the carpet and I understood it.

As the fourth week grew to a close, I finally asked. “When am I going to see Dad?”

Mom hesitated over her breakfast, but didn’t look me in the face. “Not this week. I am leaving town this week.”

“But you said…”

“Not this week. Next week.”

“Will you be back next week?” I asked.

“Maybe. I have duties to attend to.” She dabbed at her mouth with a napkin.

Anger boiled up in my chest. “You promised.”

Her eyes met mine and I suddenly understood.

“You’re never going to let me see him,” I said.

“He has had more than enough time to meddle with you,” she said. “He has wrought damage that can never be undone.”

“But you promised,” I snapped. “And now you’re just going to leave and you might leave all month or more, and you’ll never see me anyway. Why can’t I just stay at the farm?”

“Stay at the farm!” she said, incredulous.

“Takeru hates me!” I said. “And I hate being locked in the apartment all day!”

“When you can be trusted, I will let you leave. Until then, you are to stay here.”

“When’s that gonna be?” I asked.

She stared me down. “When your katas are excellently performed. When you can speak to me properly in Japanese, and not in English slang. When you respect me.” Her eyes flashed. “When you stop talking about that wretched farm and those who live there.”

“Why not?” I said. “That’s where my family lives!”

Mom’s fingers twitched. Her eyes grew wide, dark, and angry. Chills ran down my spine: for a moment I could see what she saw, the farm in flames, the family lying crooked and dead, blood against the walls and pooling on the floor. When she spoke it was in a monotone.

“I will kill them before they take you again,” she said.

My throat closed up.

I resolved to never mention the farm or Dad to her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you had told Past Me that my favorite OC would be a tiny ninja housekeeper I would have laughed at you


	13. Chapter 13

Winter came. With it, the snow: great heaping waves of it that swamped the streets. Snowplows roared down the roads; cars disappeared under drifts. The people on the sidewalks bundled up in winter coats and slipped on the icy pavement. I borrowed Fujita-san’s binoculars to watch them from the warmth of the glasshouse.

I grew taller, more proportional. I had more of a human shape—even a dip in my sides that suggested a waist. My hair began to grow in more thickly as well, something that excited me to no end. I could actually comb and shape it. Soon my head was completely dark with it, and there was hair on my arms and real eyebrows besides. Dr. Hernandez thrilled over me, took measurements, and drew constant vials of blood. I took my pills and shots eagerly and without complaint.

The food took a lot of getting used to. It wasn't that it tasted bad. In fact, most of it was delicious. It was that I had never eaten anything remotely like it before and I rarely received any American cuisine to ease the transition. Once I was in the middle of stuffing my face with Fujita-san's _okonomiyaki_ , a fried cabbage pancake drizzled with mayonnaise, and almost as quickly started throwing it back up again. Another time I was given some variation on _udon,_ oddly textured noodles with odd-tasting broth, and my throat simply closed up, and I couldn't swallow it even though I tried. Fujita-san had looked horrified, which made it worse.

Breakfasts were particularly difficult. Fujita-san would make me toast, eggs, or pancakes if I asked, and I got some orange juice eventually, but even when she did her best, nothing she made was like breakfasts at the farm. Her pancakes were so modest and overcooked. One morning when Takeru appeared, having feigned illness from school, I threw one at him like a frisbee. Ideal pancakes should never work as frisbees. They should collapse in big fluffy partitions when you try to lift them.

Mom disappeared for six weeks and reappeared for one. She spent most of it with me. It was no visit of love. I gritted my teeth at the impersonal way she treated me: grading my every movement, correcting my Japanese in snips and snaps, growling at me during my katas, complaining about how I ate and dressed and studied. My only constants were my tutors and Fujita-san.

Fujita-san! I followed her like a dog. I would have done the housework myself if she would have let me. She spoke to me the entire time, and as my Japanese blossomed, so did my conversations with her.

She told me in her sweet, wavering voice about growing up in Kyoto; the great burning _kanji_ on the mountainsides in August, the grating drone of the cicadas, the whispering bamboo thickets clustered around her garden. My favorite was Kiyomizudera with its line of grinning gods, prayers tinkling from the crimson roofs. She said that if you leaped from the platform at the very top and lived, you would be granted any wish you liked. A difficult matter, she said, granted the sheer height and the sharpened bamboo stakes at the bottom. She remembered someone attempting it—some love-stricken man.

“Did he live?” I asked.

She only smiled.

I asked about my mother eventually. Fujita-san was remarkably closed-lipped about it. Mother's family was from Kyoto originally, she said. They’d moved to Tokyo later and married into the Watanabes. It was really very simple. She brought out a little sepia-toned photograph that had been creased around the corners. It showed a little girl standing in front of a shrine in a handsome _yukata_ , her hair pinned up with flowers and beads. She looked furious.

“That’s my mother?” I asked, incredulous. “Has she always been angry?”

Fujita-san looked pleasant but said nothing, and I felt foolish for having asked.

I did not practice katas with Fujita-san as I had hoped. Instead, a tutor came in the afternoon after all my other teachers had gone home. He had crooked fingers and a crooked nose, and when he looked down on me, I felt a prickle of discomfort. His name was Mr. Satou. I had just learned that “satou” meant sugar, so I couldn’t stop thinking of him as Mr. Sugar.

One afternoon, as we were practicing with _bokken_ , Mr. Sugar said, “How is your old man, anyway?”

I startled. It was the first time anyone else had mentioned Dad since my first conversation with Takeru.

“I don’t know,” I said. I was surprised at how powerful the homesickness was, welling up in my chest. “I’ve been gone for… about four months now.”

“Good ninja, that one,” he said. “Gave you a good foundation.”

“Oh,” I said. “Thank you.”

Mr. Sugar looked over my posture and nodded. “Do you ever want to go back?”

I paused.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t tell your mother.”

I shook my head no and settled lower into my back stance.

“I wouldn’t run for it yet if I were you,” he said. “She’s got them under complete surveillance right now. They seem to be planning something. You can guess what that is.”

“Why does she care so much?” The words burst out of me. “She doesn’t even see me. She doesn’t care about what I like or want. She doesn’t even know who I am.”

“Love is a strange beast,” said Mr. Sugar with winking eyes, “and your mother cannot bear it. To be close is a torment. Very few who she loves are still alive today. Some of them, she locks up in little boxes to keep them safe.” He shrugged. “Her fears are not without merit. Even you have enemies.”

My heart jumped.

“But I haven’t done anything!” I said.

“But she has. Your father has,” he said. “There are some who see you as a sign of a cancer rotting the Foot from the inside out. Ah… I can tell you have been alone most of your life. You don’t understand our social politics. If anything is the death of you, it will be that.” He raised his _bokken_. “Your weakness will always be other people.”

I shuddered as I deflected his swing.

“I want to go home,” I said.

“I know,” he said.

**

On Christmas, I woke up early and lay in the dark, listening to the snow rattle on my window. When I rose, I wrapped myself up in a robe and crept out into the hall.

Mom was gone and Takeru hadn't mentioned Christmas at all, but that morning I couldn’t stop thinking about Dad and our last conversation. A real Christmas, with a real tree, and presents piled up to the ceiling. For a second I stood in the living room and squeezed my eyes shut and imagined the rickety farmhouse filled with lights and a store-bought plastic tree just like the ones I’d seen in countless store windows. I thought of presents stacked on top of presents and Mike dressed up as Santa. There would be a fire. Did they drink eggnog? Eat Christmas cookies, cook a Christmas dinner?

To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I were thinking about an actual event that could or would happen, or if I were stealing imagery from advertisements.

I slipped out into the white living room with its white sofa and hesitated. The apartment was cold, the light cool and pale. The _tatami_ room windows were butter yellow from the greenhouse. I didn’t feel like stepping out into the greenhouse that day. Abnormally warm and bright, it would have broken the illusion: that something _different_ would happen, something miraculous and chilly and dove-gray as a snowy morning. I pushed the curtains aside and stared down into the street. Christmas lights as far as I could see, twinkling and swaying in the breeze. The whole city was alive with them. It all seemed so far away. Might as well have been on the moon.

Have you ever felt like someone was thinking of you far away? Somehow I felt that that morning.

Fujita-san slipped out of the kitchen. “Good morning, Saya-chan,” she said.

“Good morning.”

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“Christmas lights,” I said.

“Oh! Well. I have something for you. It is not very much. Very small.” She held out her hands. Cupped in her palms was a little pearlescent box wrapped in red and green ribbon.

Prickles ran down my neck. Slowly, I reached out and took it from her with both hands. My breath stuck in my throat.

“Thank you so much,” I said. “But… I’m so sorry. I didn’t get you anything.”

She laughed. “It’s all right. I’m not an American.”

Her words panged at me, but they did not stick. Slowly, I slid the ribbons free and popped the top of the box off. There was a thin golden necklace inside, a thin glittering cord.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, and tugged it from behind its cushion. It swung between my fingers like a thread of sunlight.

“It was made in Japan,” she said, eyes disappearing into her smile. “Your mother’s favorite jeweler.”

I had never really worn jewelry before. Oh, Dad had given me a little bead bracelet when I was small, but I don’t remember what happened to it—probably broken and scattered all over a field or something. But that had been a fifty-cent bauble out of a plastic egg.

When I struggled with the lobster clasp, Fujita-san slipped behind me and helped me fasten it. She smoothed my hair out of the way.

“Very nice,” she said. “You are growing into a woman. It is good to have tasteful jewelry, just in case.”

I wanted to laugh. Instead, I burst into tears. It was so sudden and explosive that even Fujita-san jumped. I wanted to hug her, I wanted to throw my arms around her. But like she said, she’s not American. The Japanese don’t hug, they don’t touch like we do. So instead, I threw my arms around myself.

“Saya-chan!” she said.

“I’m sorry!” I said, bowing deeply. “I’m so sorry. I’m just so happy. Nobody ever thinks of me but you. Why are you so good to me?”

She bent before me, eyes crinkling. “Saya-chan, why wouldn’t I think of you?”

“Because I’m a monster.”

“Who told you that?” she asked. “Did Takeru tell you that?”

“It’s just what I am,” I said, pressing my hands to my eyes. “Nobody has to tell me that. I have a mirror.”

Her smile fell away. “Saya-chan,” she said, “you will be a leader of the Foot someday. If you let this wound fester, your enemies will sniff it out.”

“Leader! Are you joking?”

She held up her hand. “No. No. Listen to me. There are many in the history of our clan who were foul to look upon. But their skills were great, and their personalities powerful. A person’s personality eventually becomes their true face. Do you believe that you are a monster?”

“Yes.”

“Then do not half-heartedly embrace it. Put it on. Use it as a tool against your enemies.” She smiled again. It was genuine. “Did you know that some in the Foot say you are the devil’s daughter? That it was not Watanabe-san who brought the Foot out of their deep decline, but a deal with the devil?”

My jaw dropped. “But that’s ridiculous!”

“Use it,” she said. “Become the devil’s daughter. When the atheist laughs at his superstitious friends, let him retain a niggling suspicion. Make your weakness theirs.”

“But how do I do that?” I asked.

“Come here, Saya-chan,” she said, and turned toward the kitchen. “Sit down. I will make you some tea. There are some things we need to talk about.”

**

We sat across from each other in the dining room. The cup burned in my hands, but I didn’t raise it. Fujita-san had stirred up the most loathsome green tea imaginable—thick as soup. The bitter stink of it made me nauseous. I looked up and Fujita-san was smiling.

“Saya-chan, your Japanese is very good,” said Fujita-san.

“What? Really?”

“Yes. Soon you will be good enough to speak to those outside. You won’t run away, will you?”

I shook my head no.

“Very good!” she said. “Now, there are new lessons to teach you. Soon you will be among the Foot. You will be put in a squad, where you will train alongside teammates of your age. It will be quite fun!”

I sat up straight. “You mean I’ll get to go outside?”

“With your squad and squad leaders. You will not be alone at any time.” Her smile suddenly had a pointed look to it.

“I understand.”

"I am sorry it has taken us so long," she said. "It is just that… Watanabe-san and I had thought it was best that you accustom yourself to our ways before we made large changes. So far, you have done very well!”

“Thank you,” I said, and forced a sip of tea. It was like drinking a heated algae slurry.

“Although you are quite good at our art, your training will not be easy, I’m sorry to say,” she said. “There are children there who will sneer at you and call you names. They will try to overpower you in word and deed and subterfuge. They will pretend to be your friends and then try to manipulate you. Do not let your weakness grow any more. Turn it into your armor and your sword. Put fear in them: fear of you and respect for the Watanabe family.”

I stared at her blankly. She said all of this with the same gentle, lilting voice that she had named the _kingyo_.

“You will find the way,” she said. “I will help you, as will Watanabe-san. You are not alone.”

I knocked back the tea in one gulp and grimaced as it went down. I could’ve breathed fire, it was so hot. Fujita-san looked scandalized.

“Saya-chan! That is not how you drink your tea.”

“What will happen when I join the squad?” I asked.

“You will train. You will accompany a more advanced company on safer missions. As your skills grow, so will your responsibilities.”

“And when can I go outside whenever I want? Or get the Wi-Fi password?”

“Everything in its time,” said Fujita-san softly. Her eyes searched my face. But I didn’t show her. I had wrapped up the summer in Northampton and stowed it away in a safe place by then.

“I want to go outside,” I said. “I’m sick of this apartment. I need fresh air.”

“We will know when you are ready,” she said.

“I promise that I won’t go anywhere,” I said.

Fujita-san only smiled.

**

I started dreaming of fresh air—specifically, walks with Dad. Miserable marches through bar ditches morphed into unattainable paradises. Memories rolled over me in irrepressible waves: glorious sunsets, endless horizons, glittering clouds of migrating butterflies, the peeping of frogs. I would dream of the scent of rain so vividly that the taste lay on my tongue even when I woke. I thought of Dad’s face; his hand on the back of my head; the companionable way he sang to me when I was a baby in his rough, croaking voice. In some dreams, all I did was eat pancakes with my shoulders squashed between Mike's and Shadow's. The pancakes came in every color of the rainbow and were soaked in melted butter. Sometimes I woke up gnawing on my pillows.

Mad for freedom, I went out of my way to study Japanese. Fujita-san bought me children’s books, beautiful illustrated collections of Japanese fairytales, manga. My empty bookcase filled out with colorful bindings. I struggled over the swiftly-spoken sentences in TV shows and movies. I even tried to speak Japanese to Takeru.

“Why are you doing that?” he asked.

“Because then I can get into a squad and out of this apartment,” I said.

“Yeah, well, you sound like you’re five years old,” he said.

My fingers curled into fists, but I didn’t hit him. I could have taken him, though. He was just as shitty at _ninjitsu_ as he was at algebra.

Mother returned at the end of the first week of January, shaking icy droplets from her jacket. I saw her from the corner of the living room, speaking in low terms to Fujita-san.

“ _Okaeri_ ,” I said. It was the “welcome home” used in most Japanese households. I’d been using it on Fujita-san after shopping trips.

Mom's eyes lit on me only briefly and her expression did not change. But her ambivalence did not hurt me. Nothing that she did could hurt me anymore. It didn’t matter what she did or did not do as long as I got out of the apartment.

I got up at 5 AM to practice my katas with her. She seemed surprised when I walked in.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m practicing with you,” I said as I began my stretches.

She stared at me like I was a piece of the furniture come to life. I wondered what she had seen, what she had been doing. I had this feeling that she hadn’t really thought about me at all for all that time she had been gone. I was astonished at how little this bothered me.

At the end, when I had grabbed a towel and was about to leave, she said, “Wait.”

Without saying anything, she stepped into a deep back stance and began a kata. I’d seen her doing it early in the morning; it wasn’t one I was familiar with. She had gone three paces when she looked back at me and I realized that she was teaching it to me.

For an hour she went through that kata with me, uttering only single words, adjusting my hands and my stance. She spent it asking me short questions in Japanese; I answered as long as I could, as well as I could. They weren’t questions worth sharing here. Things like what shows I was watching, and what I did on my time off, and how I was studying, and my grades. I carefully avoided any subjects that could have led to the farm.

We were late to breakfast, and she was late to wherever she was going. I could tell because Fujita-san started up a passive-aggressive background murmur, exclaiming over the clock every five minutes as though she had just been introduced to the concept of time.

That night Mom returned late. I had fallen asleep on the sofa waiting for her. I woke to her touching my shoulder.

“Get in bed,” she said.

“ _Okaaaeeri_ ,” I slurred.

“Get up. Go.”

She followed me up the stairs. I was unnerved by her silence, her dispassionate face. Something was different; something had changed. Before, she seemed to have been obsessed with me. Now, she seemed to look at me as a strange new acquisition that she wasn’t sure she wanted after all.

At the door to my bedroom, she stopped.

“You have a new schedule beginning on the first of March."

My head jerked up.

"You will join a squad of children your age, overseen by two working _genin_ , _"_ she said. "You will be taught what we require of you. You will go out on missions that escalate according to your abilities; this may mean fighting and the threat of injury or death. Are you ready for that?"

"Of course," I said. We were both thinking the same thing. We didn't say it out loud.

"You will be taught our business, the layout of the city, how best to travel it, and where our enemies are most likely to give us trouble," she said. "You will be taught how to respect and work with others in a group, and how to respect and work with your team leaders. Satou-san will take you back and forth to your squad. If I so much as hear a whisper that you are trying to run away, you will regret it.”

She pivoted on her heel and strode to her bedroom. I wavered in the hallway. I could just see my window out of the corner of my eye. My reflection glanced back at me. Her newly-grown bangs covered her right eye rakishly, and she actually had hips like a human being. She looked strangely strong and taller than I remembered.

So I pushed my hair back, walked after my mother, and knocked on the door.

No answer.

I stuck my head in. She was standing at the door of her closet, itself the size of a room, her blouse draped over her arm. Her face was expressionless, closed off. She said nothing; she only looked at me. Her arms and chest were heavily toned with muscle, and there was a particularly vicious scar running from her left shoulder down to her right hip.

My plan had been to wish her good-night. Instead, I stared at the scar.

"What happened to you?" I asked.

"I left myself open," she said, folding her blouse.

"Who did it?"

She shrugged. "Oroku Saki. His Elites. Long ago. Not important."

"Shredder?"

"Oroku Saki, yes."

"Did you know him?" I asked.

"Who?"

"The Shredder. The Elites. Both?"

"Both, of course," she said. "Most of us grew up together. We were in the same squad. My father sent them here."

"Were they your friends?"

She began to laugh. "What kind of question is that? Go to bed."

I had wormed inside of the room by this point. "I'm just curious."

She shook her head and unclasped her bra, shrugged it off, then began to fold it as well. I stopped, a little startled. I never wanted to be seen without my clothes; she didn't seem to care. She certainly was no beauty—her body was all straight lines and sheer drop-offs. For some reason, this was a relief to me.

"You have chosen an odd time to be curious," she said. "It's late. Go to bed."

"You've been gone a long time, that's all," I said. "I missed you."

The words came out strangely. They almost felt like lies.

Her hands paused over the buttons on her slacks. Her face was hidden by a curtain of her hair, but I could feel her staring at me. The silence was heavy with unsaid things.

I rubbed at my forearm. "So... are you going to practice tomorrow morning?"

"Yes." She began unsnapping buttons.

"I'll be there," I said, and backed away toward the door.

She turned to me, the slacks hanging loosely on her hips. I was startled by the look on her face. It was open, softer. I felt as though I were looking through a window into a hidden passage.

"We will be going over the new kata," she said. "The one I taught you last time."

"I've been practicing it," I said.

"Nnn. Good." She turned away. "Good-night, Saya-chan."

"Good-night, Mother."

I closed the door as quietly as I could behind me and leaned on it. My heart was thudding. Was this a victory? I wasn't sure if I could call it one. It felt like a betrayal, although of whom, I wasn't certain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm starting to think that I should call this story "Breakfasts with Saya" because damn I talk about breakfast a lot.
> 
> The Devil's Daughter was the original title of this story but it made me feel cringey so off it went to title hell
> 
> Kiyomizudera is one of the most stunning places I've ever been and if you ever want to feel dwarfed by history and faith just march up the hillside and stand around gaping like a fish. Fucking gorgeous. Also, the sharpened bamboo stakes are not a joke. Although frankly I think that just puts the jump on hard mode and makes it more appealing if you are into Challenge Wishes. Like if you're going to smash yourself like a pumpkin on the walkway, what's a little bamboo stake, amirite? I'll bet it makes your wish come super true if you live.
> 
> I looked for different ways of mentioning Kinkaku-ji but that didn't work well with the flow of the paragraph so I just left it out. I still marvel at its memory. Covered in gold, man. It glows. It was overcast and it still literally glowed. I bought an omamori there and a fortune that told me I had the most average life ever. Thanks Kinkaku-ji
> 
> I fucking love Kyoto the end


	14. Chapter 14

Mom stayed at home for the end of January and the first week of February. She spent each of those days with me. The razor-sharp chill of her tone warmed in degrees. She corrected my Japanese without snippiness, taught me three new katas, and gave me books that were full of difficult _kanji_ and concepts. When she touched me with calloused fingers, it was gently.

I was growing quickly, growing more proportional. Sometimes I woke up aching all over. I could no longer lean back and touch the lip of my shell with the back of my skull. In fact, it was like the weird turtlish part of me wasn't growing at all. There were narrow, translucent divides between the plates of my plastron. When I slapped my chest it no longer had the resonance of hardwood, but had a slight hollow sound, and I could feel the impact through to the muscle. It wasn't that I couldn't feel through the bone _before_ —scrubbing my shell with a bath brush had always been one of my favorite pleasures—but that the impact was far more raw and intense than it had been in the past. The new sensitivity was a little frightening. I’d taken a baseball bat to the shell once and all it had done was knock me down. If it had hit me in the chest now, I was sure it would crack my plastron right open.

That was one of the only days I ever considered not taking my medicine. But I was too in love with my hair, so down the pills went with a cup of water.

One day Mom took me with her to a skyscraper for a day of meetings with rooms full of neatly-dressed executives. I understood almost nothing they discussed; the Japanese was polite to the point that it was another language entirely. I wondered what kinds of deals I was sitting in on and examined each unimpressive suit out of the corners of my vision. None of them looked like the kinds of people to sell weapons or drugs, I thought. They all looked so prim and proper and _bored_.

When we traveled between board rooms and buildings, I trotted half-behind her, holding her briefcase. I felt like Akemi's ghost was striding beside me. Sometimes, if I caught myself in the window glass, I even thought I saw her.

On April 30, Mom left for Japan. She leaned down to look me in the face. She had never leaned down for me before.

"Tomorrow, you'll meet your team," she said. "They will not be gentle with you for my sake."

"Good," I said.

Her smile was cold and angular, but it was for me, not against me. I felt like I had passed a test.

March 1st fell on a Saturday. The meeting time was at eight. I practiced my katas alone at five, had my shower at five forty-five, and ate breakfast at six. My hair had grown enough that I didn't have to wear my wig, and we'd had it clipped to frame my face. Fujita-san packed a _bentou_ box for me, complete with _onigiri_ and _takoyaki,_ and gently laid her soft, papery hands over mine.

"Go, Saya-chan," she said. "Put on all of your armor. Be a devil."

I felt that each step grew lighter the closer I grew to the elevator. I met Mr. Sugar in the foyer by six thirty. I had no idea how long he had been standing there. He wore a navy blue business suit with a perky orange flower in his lapel, and stood at attention until I walked up to him.

"Good morning, Watanabe-san," he said.

"Good morning, Satou-san."

His expression never changed. As always, I felt a pang of misgiving. I wasn't sure if he was a bad person or if I just mistrusted the lack of emotion on his face.

As we rode down the elevator, he crossed his arms behind his back and did not move. I couldn't help but stare at him out of the corner of my eye. I'd never seen him in a suit; it made him look like a whole different person. I was used to seeing him in full Elite regalia, complete with the conical farmer's hat. It was more of a symbol, he'd told me. Not only a reminder of where you had come from, but a harsh rejoinder: no matter how far up you climbed, it wouldn't take that much to fall back down again.

When the elevator doors opened, a well of fresh air swept up around me.

How do I describe this? As though the wind caught a great heaviness clinging to my soul and winged it away. The breeze smelled like oil and cold cement, but in my imagination—or perhaps because I was that sensitive to its fresh newness—I could smell growth and greenery, and hear the whisper of leaves. Northampton, a memory I had kept half-shuttered from fear it would be seen, suddenly flashed open to me in blazing color. My tread was light as we approached the car—a black car—a car I felt would open up and be the same one that we had commandeered in Texas, with Dad sitting in the driver's seat.

But the fancy was brief. We got in the car, which was empty and still smelled new, and Mr. Sugar made sure only that I had put on my seatbelt before turning to the steering wheel and twisting the key.

"Big day," he said.

"Yes," I said. "Uh. Thank you."

"You're joining a good squad." He waved at the person sitting at the booth and we rolled out of the parking garage slowly. "They're going to give you hell."

"Oh."

He crept out into the street. "Consider this a challenge. One of the greatest skills we can learn as ninja is how to work with our surroundings and manipulate those around us. You've had more practice than most. Hide your shell. Use your old persona. Use slang. These will be children your age, and all of them want to be Elite someday. If you act up-tight or closed off, they'll eat you alive."

"So... become friends?" I asked.

"No, no, no. No one in the Foot is your friend." He was concentrating on switching lanes and never looked at me. "Well. Maybe friendship is possible for those in the lower ranks. But you are sitting on a throne and there are people who covet that. You cannot trust anyone."

"Even you?" I asked.

"Even me."

"That sounds horrible."

"You should ask your mother how well it has turned out for her," he said.

**

We pulled into the parking lot of a boxy building without a sign. The original color was difficult to pinpoint; its present state was a chipped and faded cream, and there were big blocks of white where graffiti had been painted over. The property was surrounded by a wire fence with barbed wire on top and we had to hand papers to a guard in a box before he would open the gate. The cars that filled the parking lot were all glossy new models; if I hadn't known better, I would have thought we were pulling into a sales lot.

Mr. Sugar swiped a keycard at the door and we stepped into an oversized _genkan_. A humid cloud of varnish and sweat hit me in the face. Well-worn _getabako_ , or shoe cupboards, stood sentinel on our left and right. Past the chokepoint of the _getabako_ was a gym. All the walls were sheeted with glass, and dummies and punching bags hung at even intervals. I saw a weight room down a hallway, and past that, cardio equipment lined up in militant rows. The ceilings were high and brightly lit, hung with thick yellowed ropes for climbing, and the floor was solid wood. It would have looked mundane except for the narrow corridors, at least five, which spidered away in every direction.

The room was completely empty except for the woman standing at the front desk. She was Japanese, middle-aged, dumpy, with a broad smile and a cane. Rising from her chair with a grunt, she bobbed her head at us. I was wary of her immediately. Every now and then you meet a person who wears the weight of the people they've killed.

"Satou-san!" said the woman. "So this is Watanabe-san. We have heard so much about her."

Her eyes flicked over me from head to toe. She was drinking me in, memorizing my shape. My shoulders squared up.

"Yes." He pushed me toward her. "I bring you a message. Do not treat her any differently than you would one off of the street. Push her hard."

"Of course!" said the woman with a bow. "If you will take off your shoes, Watanabe-san?"

I quickly kicked them off before pushing them and my _bentou_ into the offered _getabako_. Mr. Sugar handed me a pair of soft-soled shoes when I had stepped up out of the _genkan_ , but did not remove his own shining Oxfords. I gave him a plaintive look.

"This way," said the woman as I slipped on my workout shoes.

I glanced back at Mr. Sugar, but he gestured after her. I grudgingly followed her through the open gym area down a hall filled with row after row of closed doors. I could hear dull impacts and loud commands through the wood. Far away, someone was crying. The dumpy woman marched me along with her unchanging smile.

"Where have you been all this time, Watanabe-san?" she asked.

"I was traveling," I said.

"Wonderful! Where?"

"Oh... just... all over the United States."

"How interesting," she said in a lyrical way. "You must know so much!"

We stopped in front of a nondescript door. A scratched ivory sign signified that this was training room A-17.

She turned her glittering eye to me. "Are you afraid, Watanabe-san?"

I looked her in the face. Hers was a cat's face, clever and blood-thirsty. I could see the younger ninja there, someone smaller and nimbler, someone terrifying.

"No," I said.

"There's no need to lie," she said. "My name is Tomoe, by the way. I oversee the training here."

"Nice to meet you, Tomoe-san." I bowed.

She bobbed her head. "Your Japanese is very good," she said. "You will fit in very well."

And then she opened the door and bowed deeply.

"Excuse me!" she called out in a sing-song way. "Watanabe-san is here!"

I heard rustling, and peeked over her shoulder. The room was a smaller version of the main gym, with _tatami_ mats and mirrors on the walls. Standing against the wall were two women, one black, the other Japanese, both wearing black uniforms with the Foot emblem over their hearts. They had obviously been dragged out of a conversation. The black woman's head had been shorn short, with lightning bolts shaved over her ears, and the Japanese woman's hair was spiked with hair gel. The memory of Shadow's messy black hair sent a pang through my chest.

I looked from side to side. No one else was present.

"Where are all the students?" I asked.

"Not here yet," said the black woman. "Come in."

"Thank you," I said, and squeezed past Tomoe-san. She smiled at me the whole time. I realized that there was a knife in her pocket, and that she was rubbing her thumb on it.

"Have a good day, Watanabe-san," sang Tomoe-san, and then she had closed the door, and I was alone with strangers again. I stood as tall and straight as I could.

"Good morning," I said.

"Good morning," said the black woman. "I'm Flynn, and this is Sugawara-san."

Flynn had an American accent, too. I relaxed a little.

"Flynn-san. Sugawara-san. It's nice to meet you."

I bowed. They bowed. Flynn looked amused. Sugawara didn't look like she felt anything.

"What do we do here?" I asked. "Should I start stretching?"

"Don't do anything yet," said Flynn. "Sit down there." She gestured at the wall.

I found a place against the wall and knelt. The _tatami_ was fresh and clean, but against the wall, there was a dark and curious stain, and head-high, there were pricks in the wall, as though from darts. I glanced from Flynn to Sugawara. Sugawara had barely moved, and her expression hadn't changed at all. She reminded me of a piece of blank paper.

“Are you wearing something beneath your shirt?” asked Flynn softly. “Because we don’t allow extra gear in these early classes.”

“No,” I said. “That’s just… part of me.”

“Ah.”

She knew already. I could feel it. Frustration flared up in my chest. I could tell that she knew more than I did about myself, somehow. And that was irritating as fuck. More of those boundless bundled histories, details hidden inside of details, rumors and whispers that both defined and were denied to me.

I ground my teeth together and glared at my reflection.

There was a knock on the door. Tomoe-san opened it. Her eyes were lost in friendly crinkles.

"Excuse me!" she said. "The Yamaguchi brothers are here."

The Yamaguchis were twins, both standing about a head above me. They moved together like a unit, bumping shoulders and glancing from side to side like a pair of curious geese. After cursory introductions with Flynn and Sugawara, they plopped down cross-legged beside me. I glared over at them and was immediately disarmed. They both had friendly, open faces. A little curious, but not maliciously so.

"Who are you?" asked one in Japanese.

"Watanabe Saya," I said.

"Watanabe?" asked the boy. "You mean like..."

His brother elbowed him.

"No," I said. "It doesn't matter."

"It does too," said the first boy. "I'm Yamaguchi Daichi."

"I'm Yamaguchi Eiji." Eiji brightened. "Can you believe we made it to the Elite groups?"

"No," I said, too quickly.

"Wait a minute,” said Daichi. “I don't remember seeing you at the try-outs.” He was starting to look sour.

"Believe me. I tried out."

“I would have remembered you,” said Daichi.

“Forgive my brother. He’s a dumbass,” said Eiji, rolling his eyes. “Everyone knows that Watanabes are never second-rate.”

“If I’m a dumbass, you’re an ass-kisser,” snapped Daichi.

The door opened again.

"Excuse me!" sang Tomoe-san. "Nakamura-san is here!"

Nakamura turned out to be a girl, her long black hair tied back into a tight braid. When she stepped into the room it was like someone had turned on a light. She was pretty like a doll; long-limbed, dark doe eyes framed by thick lashes, smooth unblemished skin. She moved with the practiced elegance of a dancer. Her training uniform was spotless, white, and tailored, loose around her joints and flaring out as she strode. She greeted Flynn and Sugawara by bowing low. Her Japanese was impeccable. Both of the Yamaguchi boys turned and brightened up immediately.

"Hi, Natsuki-chan!" said Eiji, patting at the _tatami_. "Sit over here!"

She turned and eyed us for a long, long second, then sashayed to the other side of the room.

"Oh my god," Eiji said in disgusted English.

"Nakamura-san," said Flynn, drawling lazily. "Any reason why you've decided to separate yourself from your teammates?"

Nakamura hesitated. She had just been about to lower herself to the mat opposite us. Without saying anything, she walked back over to us and descended airily beside me. She smelled like vanilla.

"Good morning," I said quietly.

She did not answer.

"Perez-san is here," sang out Tomoe.

Perez was a short, stout Latina who was missing one of her front teeth and part of an ear. Like Nakamura, she had braided her hair tightly; but unlike Nakamura, she had a limp and a natural swagger. Her workout uniform was new, but the legs and sleeves were far too long, and she’d had to roll them up. We met eyes immediately when she entered the room and had a secret understanding.

When Flynn greeted her in Japanese, Perez hesitated.

"What?" she asked.

"We speak Japanese here," said Flynn in English. "Learn it or you won't go very far."

"Shit," said Perez, blanching. "Where am I gonna learn that?"

"I'll help you," I said.

She looked to me, then back at Flynn. Flynn nodded.

"I did it, she did it," Flynn said. "You can do it, too. Just use it every time there's an opportunity and you'll be fine. Sit."

Perez flopped down beside the Yamaguchis.

"How'd you make it?" asked Daichi in English. "I thought you broke the instructor's hand."

"That's exactly why I made it," Perez said. She looked at me a long time. I looked back, unashamed for once.

"Watanabe Saya," I said, extending my hand behind the boys' backs.

"No shit," said Perez, grabbing my hand and firmly shaking it. "Angel Perez. Are you related to _the_ Watanabes?"

"Yes," said Nakamura from beside me. "She is."

We all turned toward Nakamura at once. She was still facing straight ahead, but she was smirking a little.

"And it's just like they say," Nakamura said. "She's not human."

The hair bristled on the back of my neck.

"Fuck off," I said.

Perez and Eiji began snickering. Nakamura turned to us, looking straight down her nose. Her cheeks flushed a patchy red.

"What did you say to me?" she asked.

"Shut up," said Flynn. "Face forward. Don't make me send Sugawara over there."

We all faced forward at once. Eiji had bitten his lip in an attempt not to laugh out loud; Daichi was focused on the ceiling, looking embarrassed. Perez gave me a pleased side-eye. Flynn didn't look happy. Her eye wandered down the line, settling on each of us in turn. It ended on the clock. Five minutes 'til eight.

"Dickens-san is here!" Tomoe sang out.

 _"Dicks?"_ whispered Daichi. "Dicks-san? Did I hear that right?"

"I hope so," said Perez.

A thin, dark-skinned boy sped into the room, skidded to a stop, and drooped into the sloppiest bow I'd ever seen.

 _"Hajimemashita,_ Dickens Kenton _desu,"_ he panted, also in the worst Japanese I'd ever heard. It sounded like he had a mouth full of pudding. "I couldn't find the building. I'm so sorry."

"Tardiness won't be tolerated," Flynn said in English. "This is your first and only warning."

He whipped a finger up toward the clock. "But I'm not late!" he said. "I'm right on time!"

"Sit down, Dickens-san," Flynn said in Japanese.

He squinted at her for a moment. "Oh-kay," he said, and slumped down beside Perez.

"Is there anyone else coming in?" asked Nakamura in a lofty voice.

Flynn did not look at her. Nor did Sugawara. I saw Nakamura’s fists tighten and wondered what the hell her deal was.

Flynn and Sugawara watched the clock. Soon the rest of us were staring at it, too. The hands staggered over minutes and seconds. The silence was an overwhelming mass. By the time the hands struck eight, I felt like I had lived a lifetime. Flynn rose languidly from the wall and slapped her hands together.

"Well," she said. _"Ohayou gozaimasu, minna-san."_

Perez and Dickens both looked horrified. I thanked Mom in my head; this could have been me.

"We are going to speak Japanese only in this class," Flynn said in English. "It is your responsibility to learn it. I will help you learn important vocabulary, but I'm no language teacher. If you want to become an Elite, you will have to learn. There is no other way."

"Fuck," said Dickens softly.

Flynn continued in English. "I am your _jounin_ , or head. Sugawara is my _chunin_ , or middleman. You are all our _genin_ , or working ninja. If you are here, that means you're the best in your classes. We expect that you have a moderate knowledge of _ninjitsu_. This is where we test and refine your teamwork. We are only as strong as our teams." She stared straight at Nakamura and jumped into Japanese. "Nakamura-san, you were about to separate yourself from your team. What reason did you have for that?"

Nakamura blanched. "Eh... I..."

She fell silent.

"Well?" Flynn asked.

"I don't know," Nakamura said.

"She thinks she's better than us, that's why," said Eiji.

"I don't recall asking you any questions, Yamaguchi-san," said Flynn.

Eiji clamped his mouth shut.

"'I don't know,'" Flynn said slowly, as though rolling the words around to taste them. "'I don't know.' Nakamura-san, are you saying you don't understand why you do what you do? Are you an animal, just acting dumbly out of instinct?"

Nakamura lowered her head. "No, Flynn-san."

"Then why did you separate yourself?"

"Because I want to be the team _jounin,"_ she said softly.

Eiji coughed.

"You do, huh?" Flynn cracked her knuckles. "At least you're honest. Well. Get up here, Nakamura-san."

Nakamura hesitantly rose to her feet.

"Come on, now. We already know you aren't shy. Stand here in the center of the room."

Nakamura took a deep breath and strode to the center of the room, then pivoted to face us. Her hands were balled up into fists, and her eyes flashed challenges.

I looked at Flynn. _Do we get to punch her?_

"If you were to face all five of these in your team at once," said Flynn, "do you think you could take them?"

I saw a flash of interest in Nakamura's face. Her cold eye lingered on me a long time.

"Maybe," she said.

"You understand they're all here because they're good," said Flynn. "Or did you think you'd get to lead them if you set yourself apart? Because some of them look eager to beat the hell out of you."

Nakamura shrugged.

"What exactly did you want from this assignment, princess?" Flynn asked. "Servants to bow and scrape? Because that's not the Foot. That's not ever been the Foot. We're all part of the same body here. When you lose an eye, or break a bone, you feel the agonizing pain. You're marked by it. If you can't feel that pain, if you can't display that mark, you're no good to us. You're a limb without a body. You're a face without an eye. You're a weak point for our enemies to drive a wedge into."

Nakamura looked momentarily startled, but her expression smoothed out quickly.

"Here's the challenge," said Flynn. She nodded to Sugawara, who picked up a bin full of balls and lugged it to the center of the room and let it fall at Nakamura's feet.

"For this first exercise," said Flynn, "Nakamura will work by herself. The rest of you will work as a team against her. You will take as many of these balls from her as possible."

"Excuse me," I said, raising my hand. "But do we get some time to talk about how we're going to take them, first?"

"Of course," Flynn said. "You can go out into the hallway."

**

We bunched up outside the door and it clicked behind us.

"So you know this Nakamura chick?" I asked Eiji in English.

"Know her!" he said. "She's my cousin." He glanced at Daichi. "Our cousin."

"She used to be cool," Daichi said. I realized he hadn't smiled since Nakamura had entered the room. His face had crumpled and his eyes were wet.

"I don't know what happened," said Eiji. "She was gone for the last six months for special training and poof. Total bitch."

"Okay, well," said Perez. "How hard can this be? What if four of us take her and then two of us just grab the whole bin and, y’know, leave?"

"Sounds fine to me," I said. "I think the four strongest should take her, though."

I immediately realized I had fucked up. Everyone glanced sidelong at one another, unwilling to admit that they might be less skilled than their neighbor.

"Oh my god," I said. "Okay, fine. Me and Perez will take the bin and the rest of you can punch her."

Daichi looked even more sour than before.

"Never mind," I said. "Daichi and Perez will take her balls. The rest of us will keep her occupied."

Eiji and Dickens, whose faces had turned red, burst out laughing. Soon Perez had joined them. Daichi's melancholy had progressed until his eyes were as big and dark as a puppy's.

"Gross," he said.

"Are we going to do this or not?" I asked.

"Let's jump her the minute we go through the door," said Dickens.

"Yes! I love it," said Eiji.

We threw the door open and swarmed in shrieking. Nakamura, who had grown restless, whirled around to face us with a scream of her own—this one because we'd shocked her. With sloppy, hilarious abandon, we all jumped on top of her, including Perez, who had clearly decided it would be more enjoyable. Daichi glumly dragged the basket to the other side of the room while we pummeled her. Someone accidentally kicked me in the face and pulled my hair; I don't think that Nakamura got a single hit in. I had never laughed so hard.

"Stop," Flynn said. "Back to the wall." She had a curious voice; the kind that didn't have to shout, but could still pierce through a cacophony.

Panting and giggling, we all rolled off of Nakamura and limped away. Nakamura lay groaning on the mat and rose slowly, holding her head. Her perfect white clothes were mussed.

"So, Nakamura-san," said Flynn. "That went well."

"Nnn," she said in a grumbling voice. There was a goose egg growing on her forehead. It pleased me terribly.

"Would've been nicer if you'd had a team, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, _sensei_. _"_

"Go back to the wall," said Flynn. She looked at us as a whole again. "I have never heard such loud ninja in my life."

The snickering died.

"Do you think this is a game?" she asked. Her eye fell on me. "Watanabe-san?"

"Uh... no, _sensei."_

"'Uh'?" she repeated. "You hesitated. Why did you hesitate?"

First a chill ran over me. Then a flash of anger. What a pointless, shitty thing to get upset about.

"Because you surprised me," I said. "That's all."

"Such a rude tone," said Flynn. "Do you think I could be doing better, Watanabe-san?"

"No, _sensei_. _"_

"Perhaps you think _you_ could do a better job?"

_Oh my god!_

"No, of course not, _sensei."_ My face was heating up.

"Perhaps you've been spoiled, living up in that tower with your mother," said Flynn. "Nakamura-san isn't the only princess here, eh?"

I couldn't hide the boiling rage that flashed up in me. I had to bite down on my lip, hard enough to draw blood. I forced myself to stare straight ahead, but I knew it hadn't worked. A smile was creeping over Flynn's face.

"Let me make something very clear," said Flynn, lazily drawing her eyes from mine. "This is not a game. This will sometimes feel like a game, because we're practicing with simple props and goals. There are no men with guns here, or alarms to be tripped, or ways to die. But I expect you to pretend that there are men with guns, and alarms to be tripped, and ways to die. Unless I say otherwise: you will act in complete silence. Do you understand?"

Perez and Dickens looked lost. I realized that if we didn't help them, they wouldn't make it.

"This isn't to say that sometimes we won't use sound or bright light to frighten or distract our enemies. But the main goal is to remain unobserved, for the eye to float over us, for the ear to ignore us. Of equal importance..." Her roving eye flashed. "I think I heard every single one of you speaking English out in the hallway."

Eiji and Daichi reddened.

"We only speak Japanese," said Flynn slowly. "At all times. We do this for three reasons: one, because most of our enemies can't understand it. Two, because it connects us to the foundations of our art. And three, because we are a Japanese organization."

Eiji raised his hand slowly.

"Yes, Yamaguchi-san?"

"How do we explain this to Perez and Dickens if we can't talk over you?" he asked.

Flynn smiled. "You will find ways if you want to."

**

Those ways turned out to be furtive whispers between sets, quick run-downs of common phrases and verbs. Thankfully, Flynn's speeches seemed to be over, to be replaced by teamwork exercises. Our first order of business: performing katas in perfect synchronization. Every time someone moved too fast or too slowly, we had to start over. We barely got into the second kata before we had to switch gears again.

In an adjoining room, there was an obstacle course built out of tall foam pads, rock-climbing walls, ropes, and tires. Flynn marked our goals with a laser pointer and explained that we were to hit each set point under a certain amount of time. The courses could only be surmounted by teams—letting a friend stand on your shoulders, for example, or reaching down to help someone up on a high ledge. Everyone immediately hated lifting me; I was small, but dense.

“Geez, Watanabe-san!” Eiji grunted. “Are you wearing bricks under there or what?”

My face was red by the time we reached our final goal, and it wasn’t because of the exercise.

"Terrible," Flynn said conversationally, looking down at her stopwatch.

Lunch came afterward. We sat in a sweaty circle in our training room, quietly eating our boxed lunches and drinking out of thermoses. Flynn and Sugawara sat behind us, eating their own meals. Mr. Sugar had brought me my _bentou_ box, and lounged against the far wall, his knee cocked up. I savored my _onigiri_ with closed eyes. Knowing that Fujita-san had made it gave me a surge of strength. She had cut the _nori_ into attractive little geometric shapes and shaped the rice balls like octopi.

At the end, Mr. Sugar took my box, looked me in the face as though willing me to know something, and left.

“Is that Satou-san?” Eiji whispered to me when the door shut.

“Yeah.”

 _“The_ Satou-san?”

I paused. “Uh…”

“She doesn’t know!” Daichi hissed.

“What… wait. What don’t I know?”

Eiji grinned. “He’s crazy good. Dad says that when he was young he’d do all kinds of crazy things, like break into a bank vault and leave a herd of origami pigs behind and then only take $20…”

“He robbed a casino by himself once,” said Daichi. “He dressed up as five different people to do it. Dad says that during the part where he dressed up like a woman, he hit on the male guards and got their phone numbers.”

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah. Satou-san is a legend.”

This man had just brought me my boxed lunch. He drove me everywhere. He hit me with a _bokken_ every day. I could only stare at them, bug-eyed.

“Ask him for stories!” said Eiji. “You’ve gotta ask him!”

“What are you saying?” Perez asked in clumsy Japanese. She and Dickens stared at us in jealous fascination.

“Wait,” Daichi said. (This was the first word we’d had to teach.) And then he painstakingly began to explain, in mingled Japanese and English, the story he’d just told me.

“I thought he was… uh… a helper,” said Perez, with some help from Eiji.

“Me too,” I said.

“How could you not know this guy?” asked Dickens in hushed English.

I shrugged, dragging my tongue against the back of my teeth, uncertain of what to say. Sorry, I was out wandering the United States with my paranoid mutant dad for the last ten years?

Daichi raised his voice. “You really weren’t in the Tower,” he said.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

Daichi turned red and his mouth clapped shut.

“What he means to say,” Nakamura said coolly, “is that you weren’t locked away up in Watanabe Tower or you'd know about Satou-san. Everyone thought you were dead, or an experiment, or locked up somewhere. You were always a rumor. I never believed you actually existed.”

“What?” Dickens and Perez said at once.

“Later,” hissed Eiji.

There was a pregnant silence, Nakamura staring me down viciously. I ran through a list of acceptable responses.

“Okay,” I said at last, and started picking loose fibers out of the _tatami_ mat beneath me.

“Then if you weren’t in the Tower, and you weren’t in the Bunker, where were you?” asked Daichi.

“With my dad,” I said at last.

“Who’s your dad?” asked Dickens. He had clearly not understood the entire gist of the conversation, cherry-picking the words he understood, so he still looked relatively pleasant. I would’ve been proud of him if it wasn’t so fucking awkward. Focused on my mat, I swirled the loose fibers into whirling portals and imagined falling through them.

“Her father is a mutant,” said Nakamura softly.

Eiji gasped. “Ohhh! So it's true! Your dad is one of the _kappa!”_

Daichi sat straight up. “You mean they really exist?”

I shrugged. “Yeah. Don’t you guys talk about them? I mean, two of them worked for you, and they… they kinda fought you guys all the time.”

“’You guys’?” asked Flynn.

I whipped around. Flynn was standing just behind us, her arms crossed.

“Oh no,” said Nakamura in my ear.

Flynn squatted down in front of me. I don’t think she blinked the entire time. My throat closed up.

“If the Foot are ‘you guys,’” she said, “then who are _your_ guys, Watanabe-san?”

I took a deep breath.

 _“Kappa,”_ I said.

She blinked. “What?”

 _“Kappa,”_ I said flatly, and slapped my chest. The sound was hard, like I’d hit my palm against a countertop. I was gratified to see Nakamura jump.

“Are you wearing armor?” Eiji asked, and slapped me on the back. His mouth opened into an “oh” and then he slapped my shell again.

“Stop it,” I said, and knocked his hand away.

Flynn cocked her head, eyes narrowed. “I asked who your 'guys' were, Watanabe-san.”

“I’m a _kappa,_ and I’m… I'm Foot, too,” I replied. I dragged those words straight out of the pits of hell and they burned when I said them.

Flynn's eyes ran from my face down to my misshapen hands. When she raised her gaze again, she held my eyes for a long time. My heart banged against my breastbone.

Finally, she rose to her feet. “Come with me, _minna-san._ Leave your lunches here.” She gestured at Sugawara, who had been standing behind Nakamura.

With Flynn and Sugawara leading us, we left the room, quiet and unsettled. Flynn started taking turns in the warren of hallways. The halls were very strange—only wide enough for two people standing side-by-side to walk through, with high ceilings and tight alcoves around blind corners. After two turns I had completely lost my sense of direction. She announced the directions as we went. Her voice didn’t carry very far, as though the walls swallowed it up.

“Left at A-12," she said. "When you see B-34, pass two corridors and turn right.”

“What’s in all of these rooms?” Daichi finally asked.

“Brooms,” said Flynn. “They are all broom closets.”

“I think she’s lying,” Eiji said.

We finally took a turn into a short corridor with two doors standing across from one another. They were big thick steel ones with retinal scanners and keypads, the kind I'd only seen in movies. The hallway went on beyond them and terminated in a poorly lit dead end. The corners were dusty and it smelled of disuse, but down the center of the floor was a worn, shiny rut.

Flynn and Sugawara each went to one of the keypads, typed something in, and bent forward to have their eyes scanned. They did it at the exact same time, without talking, without hesitation, and just watching it gave me a chill. I realized that at one point they had been us, and suddenly I was hungry to be that skilled, that synchronized with someone else.

As they leaned away from the scanners, the far wall slid away into the floor.

We all gasped, even Nakamura.

Flynn and Sugawara both pivoted in place toward the dark mouth in the wall.

"Turn,” Flynn barked. “And bow."

We all bowed together toward the dark gap in the wall, glancing at each other in confusion.

When we rose, Flynn looked up at Sugawara and raised her hands, signing something to her. Sugawara nodded and swept into the dark entrance first. Flynn waited at the opening and waved us through. One by one, we slipped through the egress. When I started to move through, Flynn shoved me against the wall. Nakamura, who had been last in line, sneered down her nose at me, then ducked under Flynn's arm and was gone.

"What is it?" I asked. "What did I do?"

Flynn looked me in the face.

"Are you Foot, Watanabe-san?" she asked. "Because I would hate to have to report that you had second thoughts about your allegiance."

"I'm Foot," I said.

"Say it again."

"I am Foot," I said loudly.

"You are about to be allowed into our heart, Watanabe-san," said Flynn. "These other children gave their allegiance to us long ago. Some of them have abandoned their families or given up traitors they once called friends. They are trustworthy. What about you?"

"I am Foot!" I snapped. "What will make you believe me?"

"Right now? I'm not sure."

My heart thudded. I looked back through the corridor. Suddenly I realized what this meant. Flynn had opened more than one door for me. I could back away. I could run. She wouldn't stop me. Down that hallway, the lights were bright, the fresh clean spring day beckoned. I didn't have to be here. I didn't have to be anywhere I didn't want to be.

I didn't want to be Foot. I didn't care about their heart.

Oddly, I had no thought of Northampton at that time. I don't know why it didn't come up. Perhaps because I knew that if I went down that way, there could be no Northampton for me, either. Whatever that way was, it led to a place only I could know.

Flynn leaned down until her face was only inches from mine.

"Are you running, Watanabe-san?" she asked. "I was warned that you might."

I swallowed and forced myself to face her head-on. Her nose had been broken once, the bridge flattened out, and once I was up close I could see that her jaw was slightly off-center. Her eyes were intense, searching.

"Watanabe-san," she said slowly, tasting the name, drawing each syllable out. "All you have is your name. You have never once had to prove yourself. Here, we know too well what a weak link will do. They break down. They give up. They endanger our missions, our rituals, our secrets, our lives. And you are weak."

I closed my eyes and dredged up what truth I could.

"I'm sorry, okay?" I said. "I don't know what to do."

"Huh."

Through my eyelids, a shadow shifted. Flynn had leaned away from me. When I opened my eyes again, she was relaxing against the wall, looking down at me.

"Why?" she asked.

"What did they tell you?" I asked.

One corner of her mouth turned up, but she said nothing. Neither did I. How could I possibly show Northampton to her, a stranger with uncertain motives?

Sugawara stuck her head through the egress and scowled at us before signing to Flynn rapidly. Flynn signed back curtly. Sugawara glowered at me, and was gone again.

"Just trust me," I said at last. "I have to do this."

"You have to?" said Flynn. "And when the conditions for your temporary alliance with us are gone, what will you do?"

"If I don't do this," I said, "they'll kill everyone I love."

Flynn's expression was noncommittal. Her index finger tapped slowly on her forearm.

"And if the opening was given to you?" she asked. "You would run. If your _kappa_ friends were killed? Your allegiance would disappear. Is that what you are telling me, Watanabe-san?"

I bowed deeply to her from my waist.

"Just let me go," I hissed through my teeth. "I swear that I'm not weak."

"Words mean nothing," she said.

My heart dropped out. I stood before her utterly transparent.

"What are you going to tell my mother?" I asked softly, peering up into her face.

I hadn't meant this to be a prod. I expected a lecture, or to be sent back to the classroom, or made to wait outside. But when I said this I saw a flash of fear. It was very quick, and had I blinked I never would have detected it, but it was there.

"Like I said," she said, straightening up and gesturing through the door. "All you have is your name. Go."

I ducked through and waited nervously in the dark. I could feel her presence just behind me, like the pressure of a breeze. There was a single beep and the door closed, plunging us into pitch blackness. And then her fingers lightly pressed against the back of my neck... as well as the faintest prick of a _kunai_. A reminder.

She drove me through the darkness, directing me with her fingers. Left. Right. Left. Left. I couldn't see the corridors, but I could feel the narrow walls and breezes when we passed by forks in the path. At last, we came to a stop, and Flynn reached over my shoulder and pressed a button. Another beep, and a door in the wall opened. The light blinded me. I was shoved through without ceremony.

"What kept you?" asked Eiji.

"Stuff," I said, my arm over my eyes.

We were standing in a dimly lit foyer paneled in dark wood. Everything smelled old and musty. On either side of us were stone troughs of clean, flowing water, cups with long handles balanced cup-down. There was a _getabako_ in the wall, but unlike the heavy-duty one at the front door, this one was a simple affair crafted with carefully-fitted planks of wood. Grooves had been worn into the centers from years of use. One small, dark door with a gleaming brass doorknob stood before us.

"Here, Watanabe-san," Flynn said curtly. "Purify yourself."

She picked up a ladle with her right hand, pouring it over her left, then grasped it with her left hand and poured it over her right. Scooping water into her left hand, she swished it around in her mouth and spat beside the trough, then cupped water in the ladle once more and spilled it over the handle.

I stumbled along beside her. She wasn't happy with it. She made me do it again.

"You don't have to do all of that," Eiji said. "You can just wash your ha..."

Flynn turned slowly to face him. Eiji’s mouth went slack.

Flynn signed something to Sugawara, who signed back.

"Back to the trough, everyone," said Flynn. "Do it right. This is no tourist trap."

Quietly, everyone assembled again and followed Sugawara and Flynn's instructions. Pour with this hand, _then_ that hand. Don't drink out of the cup. Don't swallow the water. Dickens-san! This is not mouthwash!

“Remove your shoes,” Flynn said. "Put them in the _getabako._ Line up. Stand in twos. Here. Here. Here."

As she arranged us, she put me at the very back and bid Nakamura stand alongside me.

“Princesses belong together,” she murmured between us, and patted our shoulders.

Then she strode up to the head of the group and faced the door so that all we could see was her back.

"This is the heart of everything," she said. "You are about to stand in the presence of the _kami_ that blessed our forefathers in Japan. You will speak of this to no one outside of the clan. Only the Foot may behold it; only the Foot may speak of it. It deserves your absolute devotion and respect. Do not speak once we go through the door. An important reminder: you will not come here if you have killed, if you are wounded, if you are grieving, or if you are sick. We will discuss what to do in those cases later. Now bow!"

We bowed altogether toward the door. Then she twisted the knob and we followed without sound.

We passed beneath arched vines into an honest-to-god garden. Unlike the greenroom at home, it was allowed to run wild, mostly with flowering bushes and nodding wildflowers. It had been walled into the center of the building; the only entrance and exit lay behind us. The roof was sheer glass, illuminated by the spring sun until it shone a pale green, and golden motes of light drifted around us in vague currents. The air was still, humid, warm; the stones beneath our feet were cold and damp and smoothed by the hundreds who had passed there before. In the middle of the room, a vermilion _torii_ stood guard. Except for the hum of the lights, all bright white grow lights of some kind, there was no sound at all.

Near the back of that womb-like room, couched in the worshipful leaves of a gnarled tree, was a pillared crimson shrine with gilt eaves. Looping from its pillars was a fibrous rope hung with curiously folded white papers. Twin rat statues flanked it, staring sightlessly at us. One of them perched on top of an orb; the other one clutched a scroll. Lichen flowered on their shoulders.

We stood in baffled wonderment. Speaking seemed completely impossible there. There was something _alive_ there, something very old, quiet, sleepy… aware. I was struck with a desire I had never had in my life: to worship, to pray. Not knowing exactly how to acknowledge it was a physical pain.

Flynn and Sugawara stopped just before the altar and bowed twice, deeply, from the waist. Then they clapped and bowed their heads over their clasped hands. We echoed them. Our claps followed theirs like staggered sixteenth notes. The distinct impacts echoed around the room in sharp staccato bursts, growing progressively fainter and fainter. I glanced at my squadmates, not sure what to do next. Eiji, Daichi, and Nakamura had closed their eyes, touching their hands to their lips. I followed suit. Was this praying? The fountain sang softly behind us. The humidity was a pressure, almost a living one. My breathing seemed too loud.

 _Where do I go from here?_ I asked in my head. _I miss my dad. I miss my uncles. I miss Shadow and April. I just want to feel like I did in Northampton all of the time. How do I get there?_

Air puffed on my forehead, just like someone had blown on me.

My eyes flew open. I was the only one looking. I was sure I saw a pale yellow light between the pillars, just before the dark shuttered doors in the _honden_ itself. And then it was gone.

Before I could think about what I had just seen, Flynn and Sugawara bowed, one after the other. So I bowed. I bowed as low as I could. It seemed like the right thing to do.

**

When we got back to our training room, all we did was continue the synchronized katas. Flynn did not talk to me directly for the rest of the session. I was grateful for it. There was room for me to think on the quiet room with its quiet _kami_. I felt like it was still with me, a golden warmth and security in the center of my body.

At 5:00, we were led to the _genkan_. Mr. Sugar was waiting for me, my _bentou_ box under his arm. Flynn immediately went to speak to him in low tones. I didn't dare look at them. As I pulled out my shoes, my squadmates began drawing phones out of their cupboards. They began scrolling through their feeds.

"We should get each other's phone numbers," said Eiji.

"Yeah!" Perez said.

"You have Snapchat?" Dickens asked.

Soon they were bunched together, phones touching, heads tilted toward one another. Even Nakamura slid over into the group. She had been rather quiet lately, I thought.

"Watanabe-san!" said Eiji, waving at me. "What's your number?"

My stomach sank. Just as I was about to say that I didn't have one, Mr. Sugar came up behind me. He reached into his pocket and drew out a thin black phone, then slipped it into my hand. It was the phone that Mom had bought for me months ago. There was a bit of paper taped to the front, and in his handwriting was my phone number.

I looked up at him with an open mouth.

"They're waiting for you," he said.

I rushed over into the group. Their shoulders knocked against mine. We bent together over our glossy screens.

"I got a new phone," I said dumbly, swiping the screen left.

"Nice!" said Eiji. "Is that your phone number? I'll text you."

My phone began to chime and vibrate in my hands. I pressed my hand up against my mouth. One new text message. Two new text messages. Three. Four. Five.

"We need a name for our squad," said Dickens. "Something with Oni. Dark Oni Six. Yyyyeaaah!"

"Oh, please, no," Nakamura said softly.

"I'm adding you as Dicks-san," Eiji said.

"Yeah? I'm adding you as Assface-sama."

Eggplant and peach emojis swarmed our group chat.

"Can we meet outside of class to go over Japanese?" asked Perez.

"Sure," Daichi said. "You're still living at the Clubhouse, right?"

"Yeah."

"We can go after to the Pavilion after this, if you want."

As I added my teammates to my address book by their proper names, I looked up. Nakamura was staring at me. She had sent me one text with her name in _kanji_ and _hiragana_ and nothing else. No greetings, no emoji, not even punctuation. I realized that although her thumbs were moving, she was scrolling through her Facebook feed while not looking at it at all. I felt sorry for her all of a sudden. She looked lost.

**

When we got in the car, Mr. Sugar started driving without saying anything. I didn't notice at first as I was totally wrapped up in my phone, adding apps, replying to the group chat. Eiji and Dickens were in the middle of a meme-war. I laughed into the screen more than once. I hadn't laughed in so long that it both hurt and felt intoxicatingly new at once.

When the car finally pulled into the garage and groaned to a stop, I looked up at Mr. Sugar.

"Thank you for the phone," I said.

"Don't thank me," he said. "Thank your mother."

He looked so solemn that for a moment I forgot that I was happy.

"Did I do something wrong?" I asked.

He pressed his lips together. "No."

"I like my squad," I said quickly. "They seem like good people. I like the Yamaguchis best."

"Good family," he said, unhitching his seatbelt. "They've been in the Foot for generations."

"They told me about you," I said, and waited.

"Is that so."

"Did you really dress up like a woman and get guards' phone numbers?" I asked.

"Yes." He stepped out of the car and opened my door.

"Did you really break into a bank and only steal $20? Why?"

"To cover the cost of origami paper."

"What else did you do?" I asked, hopping out.

"You should ask the Yamaguchis," he said.

"Why won't you tell me?" I asked, trotting after him.

"Because secrets are powerful," he said. "What did you tell them about yourself?"

"I... that I was traveling with my dad before I came here. That's all."

"Good. It's general enough. Don't tell them any more. It is for your safety. Every piece of yourself that you give can be turned back onto you here."

"Then what are we supposed to talk about?"

"The craft, our language, our goals. Or start a conversation about what your friends like. They'd like that. There are many things you can talk about without ever talking about yourself." He turned smartly on his heel to face me. It was so quick that it startled me. There was a fresh new flower in his buttonhole, I realized suddenly. It was yellow. I wondered when he had gotten it.

"Watanabe-san," he said, "do you know why I waited for you in the _genkan?"_

"Because you're my bodyguard?"

"Partly. But also to watch your belongings to make sure no one puts poison in your food, or slips a needle into your shoe."

My mouth fell open. I thought of Tomoe-san.

"Think forward," he said. "What kinds of people will your friends be in ten years?"

I paused. I thought of Sugawara and Flynn, signing to each other and moving like one unit together in the hallway.

"Will we be training new recruits?" I asked. "Or on missions!"

"I said what kinds of people, not what kinds of jobs."

"I don't understand," I said.

"The person your father was, ten years ago," he said. "He is not the same person now that he was then. Likewise, the person I was, ten years ago. He was different. The person your mother was: different. All change is a series of little deaths. None of us are the same person we were as children. And for children, that process is so much faster. There is no way you can know how safe these friends will be. This is, in many ways, the most dangerous part of your life. I am telling you this in the hope that it will save you."

There were tears in my eyes.

"Listen," he said. "Some of them won't be your friends anymore in ten years. Some will die. Some will learn to hate you. Most dangerous: some will make alliances they treasure more than yours, and you won't understand it until too late. Right now you may be arming your enemies. Each truth you give them is an arrow for their quivers. Hope that they think well of you, but don't expect it."

"I have an enemy now," I said softly.

"Oh?"

"Nakamura-san."

"Hmm." He nodded. "Temperamental family."

He swiped his card at the elevator and we stepped into it.

"She doesn't like any of us," I said.

"She was probably told not to."

Suddenly I felt very sad. I stared out of the glass window as we broke out of the roof of the parking garage. My pocket had buzzed nonstop with the group chat the entire time. In only a few minutes it had been transformed into signals both unanswerable and unattainable.

"I don't want to be friendless for the rest of my life," I said in a small voice.

"It is a necessity," he said.

I understood my mother then. I understood her in a flash. I understood her angry little face in the sepia photograph: standing there, all alone, because she had to, not because she wanted to. I thought of how much the bushes and bamboo and shrine had filled the picture, and how small and alone and pale she stood beneath them. I understood then why she would go to my father, why it didn't matter what he looked like. He was not Foot, not really; he was outside, and that meant that he was free. When they were together, she could pretend she was free, too.

When we got to the apartment, I kicked off my shoes at the _genkan,_ feeling numb and depressed.

 _"Tadaima,"_ I called out. There was no heart in it.

 _"Okaeri nasai,"_ Fujita-san sang to me from the kitchen. "How was it?"

I paused and looked back over my shoulder. Mr. Sugar nodded from the doorway.

"Thank you," I said.

For the first time, he gave me a smile. His eyes were emotionless, and he was missing one of his canines. Saluting me, he backed away and shut the door. I shivered a little.

"Saya-chan! You are talking too quietly. I cannot hear!"

I took a deep breath and stepped up over the threshold.

"It was great!" I said. I held up my phone. "I got a phone! I really like my squad."

"Oh, I'm so proud of you, Saya-chan. Come here. I made you some mochi."

I trotted into the dining room and plopped down at the table, setting the phone beside me. It was still buzzing. All I had eyes for was Fujita-san, who shuffled up beside me with a white plate. Mochi lined up in rainbow rows. I picked up the _kinako_ one with my fingers and bit off a piece, then began to suck on it. _Kinako_ is roasted soybean flour and tastes reminiscent of peanut butter. As an added bonus, there was sweet red bean paste inside. This was one food nobody had had to ram down my throat.

"Tell me about your day," said Fujita-san, sitting down at the table.

So I told her about the group, and how much I liked the Yamaguchis and Perez and Dickens, and how Nakamura seemed so rude. I warmed up as I told her. Mr. Sugar's advice grew fainter with the re-telling. I could only imagine skullduggery from Nakamura, and even then, I wasn't afraid of her. Wouldn't any violence on me reflect back on her? I was Watanabe. She only wished she could be me.

Then I came to the shrine. My voice faltered.

"Fujita-san," I said, "can you tell me about the shrine?"

"They didn't tell you?"

"No. We just did synchronized katas again."

"Very strange." Her tone was disapproving.

"They didn't trust me," I said quietly.

"You are a Watanabe," she said. "You should be allowed to know. Even your father was allowed into the shrine."

My eyes widened. "Really?"

"Yes. The _kami_ is everything," she said. "The _kami_ is in everything. The _kami_ is why we are here at all, and why _ninjitsu_ is not merely a memory."

"A _kami_ is a god, right?"

"Yes. Or it can be many gods. Or it can be the energy that empowers life, a flowing vein through all life here on Earth, reaching up to the Emperor and beyond him to the gods themselves. For the Foot, we had a single _kami_. His name was Nezugami. He was a rat _kami_ of prodigious size. The legend was that he had come to the poor farmers in Iga Province and said, 'Let me show you how to sneak in the darkness, how to kill and steal without a sound, how to use flame, how to become anyone you please and manipulate men with your speech and dress. In this way, you can make a fine living and your children will no longer starve. If you respect me properly, I shall always bring you prosperity.'

"And so we built a shrine to Nezugami and he taught us his ways. For a while he lived among us as an old man with a walking stick and long whiskers. A rude child pulled his whiskers and poof! He was a great rat in a _yukata,_ and scurried away into the forest.

"Back in the old days, the fathers of the Foot Clan lived in one village of several villages in Iga Province. Each village had its tutelary shrine. Some were taught their arts by _kami_ ; we shared freely with our brothers, and they shared with us. For a time we were unassailable, and warlords bought and sold our services. Just as Nezugami had promised, our children grew strong and tall.

"Although we had countless enemies, we were safe for many years. You see, Iga Province lay between mountains, and was difficult to assail. Narrow passes meant that we needed few defenders. Many had tried and failed to eradicate us. Eventually, the warlord Nobunaga, weary of our mischief, sent thousands of troops through each and every pass at a single time. He destroyed us almost utterly. Much art and wisdom was lost. Castles, villages, and shrines were set aflame. The valleys shone red.

"It is said that the night he began his attack, a dream came to the people of our village. Nezugami stood in every doorway and path. He stood as tall as a man and he had eyes like the full moon.

"'Doom is coming,' he said. 'Get up. Come with me into the mountains. Get up. Take the sacred palanquin. Get up. Do not bring fire. My people will show you the way.'

"Each and every man, woman, and child rose from their futon. They took only what they could carry. Soon they were walking up into the thick forest. No one brought fire. Before them were the priests carrying the gilded palanquin within which Nezugami rode. Far ahead, they saw yellow lights, which faded as they were reached. On every side there was a whispering and a rushing sound, for they were accompanied by waves of rats.

"That night they hid in mountain caves. They watched as their village went up in flame. The soldiers swept up into the forest to look for the villagers, but every time they grew close, the rats would jump out of the trees and shake branches together, thereby leading them away into the darkness. The soldiers never found their hiding places. The villagers watched and they were not afraid. They ran ahead of Nobunaga, and they were never found. That is why we were called the Foot; we were always running."

I was still chewing on my second piece of _mochi,_ staring at her in wonderment. "A rat," I said softly.

"Yes. Perhaps he is not as charming as the fox, or as wise as the turtle, but in his quiet cunning he is the most skilled."

"When you are praying before a shrine, what does it mean if you feel a puff of air?" I asked.

She smiled. "It could mean many things. I am sure it means that your prayer was heard."

I looked down at the mochi.

"Can you bring the _kami_ an offering?" I asked.

Fujita-san nodded. "Of course you can."

The next time my squad went to see the shrine, I brought three hundred dollars in twenties, rolled up and bound with a rubber band. It went into a locked box that hung alone in a dark recess. When I bowed to pray, I saw nothing out of the ordinary, but I felt that there was a kind of understanding between the _kami_ and me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you've heard of "Sand Arrow"  
> now get ready for "RAT GOD"


	15. Chapter 15

My birthday fell on March 15. At first I thought it would pass like Christmas, without ceremony, because nobody talked about it in the upcoming week at all. It made me wonder if Dad had given me the wrong date, whether by accident or as a lie. But when I stepped into the exercise room on the fifteenth to practice my katas, it was to see Mom standing against the far wall holding a _bokken._ I nearly jumped out of my skin.

"Mom!" I said. "What are you doing here?"

"I came back last night," she said simply, tapping the tip of the _bokken_ against the wall. "Shall we spar?"

She was so, so good. One minute she'd be posed loosely aside from me. The next, I'd be flat on my face. I would think I had her and be halfway through a swing and get cracked on the head, or she'd whoosh past me and hook my ankles. I was rapped and knocked down a hundred times. But to my delight, I got her twice: once raking her beneath the breast, the other a blow to her armpit. The second time I got her, she laughed. It actually sounded mirthful.

"You have been practicing," she said, and dropped her hand companionably onto my shoulder. Chills ran down my spine. She was smiling! For me!

We stopped long enough to sit against the wall, panting with exertion. She took a long swig of some bottled water and handed it to me. I drank the lukewarm water in silence, staring at the door. The lip of the bottle tasted like sweat.

"Satou-san told me about your training," she said after a moment. "He says you get along well with your squad."

"I like them," I said. We had been going out together almost every day, helping Perez and Dickens with Japanese, and moving like a pack among the buildings around the Clubhouse where Perez lived. The Clubhouse, as it turned out, was a recruitment center stationed in a low-income area. Officially, it was a non-profit aimed at the elevation of at-risk youth. Unofficially, it was a Foot recruitment center. The Pavilion that Daichi had mentioned was a food court inside of it. Room and board was cheap for recruits, and if you were good enough, you got it free. Perez lived in one of the free rooms with her sister, who was two years younger than she was and an excellent trainee herself. Neither girl said anything about parents, so we didn't ask.

"Breakfast," sang Fujita-san from the dining room.

Mom rose to her feet with a grunt, offered her hand, and lifted me to my feet. Clinging to her in that weightless moment was thrilling. We strolled side by side to the dining room. Breakfast was the normal array of fish, rice, vegetables, soup, and tea. I had become the old pro at my chopsticks.

 _"Itadakimasu,"_ we said, and jumped in.

"Your tutors won't be coming in today," Mom said.

I paused and swallowed. "Oh? Why's that?"

She paused, a piece of fish halfway to her mouth. "It's your birthday," she said. "Don't you know?"

"Oh," I stammered. "I mean, yes. It's just that nobody said anything, so..."

"I never forget your birthday," she said. She looked so matter-of-fact that I totally lost my train of thought. "I will take you shopping."

When I told my squad the reason I wasn't coming in for training, they were shocked.

"You're only eleven?" Eiji asked.

"Yeah!" I said. "How old are you?"

"Thirteen!"

"I'm fourteen," Dickens said.

"You don't seem like you're eleven at all," said Perez.

I didn't know what to say. Mutants mature faster? I'd lived a hard life before the Tower? I decided to go with option three.

"Thanks," I said.

"Are you gonna have a party?" Eiji asked. "Can we come?"

"Am I having a party?" I asked Mom. We were sitting in the back of her car on a route I didn't recognize.

"If you wish," she said.

"I want to invite my squad," I said.

"Then you may."

"Tomorrow?"

"Of course." She was staring out of the window.

"Where?"

"Same room that you meet your tutors in." Her voice was so quiet and dreamy. I could only vaguely remember her using this tone early on, when we'd met in Northampton.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked.

She laughed softly. "I never thought I would have this day with you again," she said.

Prickles ran up and down my spine.

"What was it like?" I asked. "When I was born, I mean. Was... was..." I swallowed the pronoun before it came out and prayed she hadn’t seen it.

"No. He wasn't there." There was no hate in her voice when she said it. "But he was waiting. And I was too weary to fight him."

"He just... he just broke in?"

"Yes. In the dead of night, while I was sleeping."

Anger hit me without warning. I'd never really taken any time to imagine Mom's perspective at all. When I'd thought of that night, I'd thought of Dad swooping in to wrest me from the arms of a villain in a lab coat. I'd never thought of him slipping into a darkened room to snag me out of a crib, Mom lying nearby in helpless exhaustion.

"But how could he know?" I asked.

"I don't know." She shrugged. "I have always had enemies... of various kinds. My father and the Council did not approve of your birth. I suspect they alerted him in one way or another." She turned from her reflection to me. Her eyes were sharp. "What did he tell you?"

"He said that an Elite told him," I said.

"Hmm. Which one?"

"He never said."

"A pity." She brushed my hair out of my eyes. "We should have your hair styled."

"Why did you have me?" I asked.

She smiled. "Why not?"

"Uh..."

"I watched your father rise from blows that would have killed a human being," she said. "I saw him heal faster than I did from similar wounds. Never did he complain of allergies or colds or flus. At first, all I wanted was that for myself. He was easy to draw in. No experience with women or love at all. He would do anything for me. His loyalty was unquestionable and blind."

My heart grew cold. All I could see was Dad staring miserably off into the trees, Dad keeping little pictures of her, Dad with the pretty katana that he worshipfully maintained and never used. I thought of the picture I had saved from him. I wished I hadn't.

"But I have always been sentimental," she said. "A fatal flaw. It was impossible not to meet like with like. Your father was honest. He was always honest. If he told me what he thought, he meant it. If he said he would do something, he did it. He did not lie. No, that came later." Her voice was bitter. "And soon I simply invited him because I enjoyed his company. I told myself it was because he alone could be trusted completely. Unlike other men..." She paused. "Have I told you about Oroku Saki?"

I shook my head no.

"Oroku Saki was Akemi's... my first child's father," she said. "He courted me from the time we were placed in the same squad. I was flattered because I was a child and a fool. I became pregnant when I was sixteen. That was when Saki showed his hand. He begged my father for my hand in marriage. Not me—he never went to me." Her voice was frigid. "No interest in me. No interest in our child, except that it be a boy, of course. He was going to take the Foot from me. Put me in a little house, flash me around in meetings, win the approval of the Council. A bloodless coup." Her hard eye flashed to mine. "You will find such people in your squad even now. Beware Japanese men in particular. This is a curse of our country. They expect all women to melt into housewives with no dreams or desires of their own. The wedding ring is a shackle."

"You... said no?" I asked slowly.

"My father said yes. I said no. Both of them were furious. The Council degraded me. My friends abandoned me. Our squad fell apart." She crossed her legs. "Saki said I should have an abortion if I wasn't going to marry him. I said I would have the child if I liked. How angry Saki was. He made a fool of himself in his rage. We sent him to New York to busy him with other work. He focused his anger in other directions. You know the rest of that story."

"And then you met Dad."

"No fear of marriage with that one." She smiled unpleasantly. "No fear that he would try to use me as currency with the Foot—such a union was horrific to everyone. No. He was honest. He expected no favors. He merely wanted to be with me. Such an honest, warm, foolish person, your father. You could see straight through him. His sole flaw was that he could not face his hypocrisies without collapsing. I suppose I was responsible for... worsening his condition. But it wasn't my responsibility to parent him.

"At the same time, my scientists were experimenting with creating some kind of genetic treatment to solve the physical failures of my body. A _jounin_ who cannot defend herself is one that dies sooner rather than later. It was my bioengineers who began to make fetuses as an attempt to bridge the differences between our bodies—only one experiment of many. Most of the fetuses were totally untenable. Only one kept growing. That one was you. They told me they could grow you in a vat with no threat to me, but when your growth stalled, I opted to have you implanted. We didn't expect anything. But you lived and you were born." She leaned on her hand and looked me down. "I loved you completely, my strange, otherworldly child. Your birth was like magic."

I rubbed the back of my hand against my eyes.

"Of course," she said, "by that time the Council, and my father, had discovered I was trysting with your father. And that would never do. They wanted him out or dead. So I sent him away. And instead of trusting my judgment, he came for you."

"He said you never told him anything," I said.

"I never had to before," she said. "I should have realized that love was a slow poison for him. It made him mad. Perhaps possessive."

"He was afraid," I whispered. "He was afraid you'd put me into the Bunker like an experiment and he felt responsible."

She snorted. "Is that what he tells himself?" She looked me in the eye. "Your father wants to think of himself as a good person. When he sees his moral failures, he fabricates whole stories to support his mythical goodness. Like a child, he believes his own lies. In many ways, I am more honest than he. I know exactly what I am." She smiled, rapping a forefinger against her cheek. "What a shame he could not master this part of himself. I believe he was the only man I truly loved."

Biting my lip, I reached out for her. She reached back and squeezed my hand in hers.

"Thank you," I said.

"For what?" she asked.

I unbuckled my seatbelt and slid next to her, then threw my arms around her. She stiffened for a second. And then she held me back.

**

Mom took me on a whirlwind trip of dining and shopping. Our first destination was the bookstore, where she told me to get whatever I wanted. After wandering through shelf after shelf of promising choices, I had made a stack almost as tall as I was. Thinking about the size of my bookshelf, I shrugged and said I had a reading app if she'd just give me some money for that. She bought me a gift card for $1000. It required a visit from the store manager and caused a line that stretched all the way to the stationery section.

I goggled at the card as she handed it to me.

"What?" she asked.

"I'm gonna have books for the rest of my life," I whispered.

We upgraded my phone to the latest model, plenty of space for images and videos and books. She took me to a ritzy restaurant where I stumbled over French names and tried my first sip of wine. And then there was the moment that the sedan rolled to a stop before what seemed a wall of trees. I gaped and pressed my face against the window. There were horses drawing carriages, and food carts, and past the looming trunks were rolling green lawns. Women in sports bras jogged past with earbuds; families sauntered by walking dogs and pushing strollers. Kids were throwing balls and frisbees to each other.

"Is this Central Park?" I asked.

"Yes," Mom said. "But we're here for the museum."

Indeed, at the edge of the park was the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a pale fortress looming up on carved Grecian pillars. I gazed upon pillowy white Roman marble and cocked my head at a modern series depicting bones and organs crafted from papier-mâché. We lingered in the gift shop, where she bought me a pad of art paper, an overpriced pack of pencils, and a book on using graphite. After we were through feeding our eyes, we padded down the steps to the darkening green trees. She bought me an ice cream and we wandered up toward Belvedere Castle, lit up in gold above a black pond. The sky was a featureless orange haze above us, and the omnipresent groan of traffic was muffled by the trees.

I swung my shopping bag as we walked. "Have you ever been here before?" I asked.

"Yes. A few times."

“Have you… have you ever been here with Dad?”

There was a pause. Her eyebrows rose. “No.”

“Why not?”

“You should know the answer to that question.”

“You mean he was always hiding? Even back when he was young?”

She tapped at her thigh with an index finger. “Always. Very cautious. Terrified of revealing himself.”

I lapped at an escaping chocolate dribble. “You didn’t mind?” I asked.

“There were always other things to do. This is only one.” She shrugged. “He wouldn’t have been comfortable, so it wouldn't have been enjoyable for either of us.”

“Why’s he always afraid?” I asked.

“He’s a living curiosity." She extended one finger. "The scientific world would draw and quarter him." She raised a second finger. "He dreads too much interaction. The idea of being visible horrified him. He’s a criminal and a murderer. Many reasons. All valid.”

She had run out of fingers.

“Well, I was _thinking,”_ I said, drawing the sentence out.

Her eye flicked down to mine. Her expression had alternated between dreamy and sardonic throughout the day, but now it was severe.

“I was wondering if I could see him,” I said as quickly as possible. “I miss him.”

She looked toward the castle. The wind played with her hair.

“He’d like seeing you too,” I said.

Her shoulders stiffened. My mouth kept going without my brain, and I could feel the oncoming fuck-up one millisecond before I spoke.

“He still loves you,” I said.

She threw her head back and laughed uproariously. I jerked back and nearly stabbed my chest with the ice cream.

“What’s funny?” I asked in a tiny voice.

“Nothing,” she said, grabbing me by the arm. “We’re going home.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“Nothing unexpected,” she said. “Although your birthday has made you greedy.”

**

The drive home was a quiet one, but not unpleasant. Mom sat with her chin resting on the heel of her hand, staring out of the window. I crunched up the last of my ice cream cone, licked my lips, and sucked on my fingers.

“Thanks,” I said at last. “Today was awesome.”

She grunted.

“I’m sorry I talked about Dad so much,” I said.

The eyes in her reflection met mine.

“I just miss him,” I said.

“Saya. Stop.”

There was an edge to her amusement. I took the hint.

When we finally returned to the apartment parking garage, I felt sleepy and fat and warm. We meandered side by side to the elevator. Mr. Sugar stepped out of the darkness beside it. He was dressed in Elite armor with his hat shadowing his eyes.

Mom froze. I did, too.

"Satou-san?" she asked.

He slid up to her and whispered in her ear.

"No," she said softly. Then she glanced down at me. "Tell me Takeru did not act out."

Mr. Sugar said something negative and she hissed between her teeth.

"Very well," she said. "Saya-chan, be wary. Your grandfather and grandmother are here. They will not like you."

I ran my fingers through my hair. "What do I do?" I asked.

"Be quiet. If they ask you questions, say yes or no. Don't tell stories. Be polite. That's all." She swiped her card at the elevator and we stepped on. Mr. Sugar stepped in front of the elevator and gave me a little wink. I wasn't sure how I felt about it. Then the door shut and we lifted off.

When we stepped into the foyer, I drew back for a second. On one side of the hallway were Mom’s normal Elites. On the other side were a group of four ninja I had never seen before. Their uniform was very similar—black _hakama,_ chestplate, and pauldrons, the unique hat and high red collars—but the Foot symbol was on a band around their right and left arms, not over their hearts. Mom hesitated a moment before stepping out, and pushed me toward her left so that she stood between me and the strangers. I noted that her fingers were in her pockets. The strange Elites stood at attention with their feet at shoulder’s width and their hands clasped behind their backs. When I glanced at our Elites, I noticed that all four of them had their hands on the hilts of their katana, and their unblinking eyes were fixed on their counterparts across the room.

Despite only being a walk of only twenty feet, I felt like I was running a gauntlet.

When we finally reached the _genkan,_ I could feel my grandparents in the air. Not only the smell of them—an aged smell—but also the tension of their presence. Two pairs of strange shoes sat in our genkan—a shining pair of men's dress shoes arrested my attention first. Fujita-san rushed up to us, her eyes huge and dark. I had never seen her worried before. She leaned in toward Mom and whispered something. Mom grimaced and nodded. Then Fujita-san leaned in toward me.

"Takeru was not polite at all," she said. "He's locked himself in his room. Your grandparents are furious. Be careful."

I nodded.

Fujita-san leading the way, we donned our house slippers and marched off to face the dragons.

My grandfather and grandmother were both sitting at the dining room table. They did not rise when we entered. Both of them were thin, wrinkled, dried-out people. My grandfather wore an expensive black suit and a shining gold Rolex. My grandmother wore a handsome kimono embroidered with cranes in gold thread. She had a mole on her upper lip with two long gray hairs growing out of it. I immediately thought of witches.

"Father, Mother. Good evening," Mom said. "I'm sorry that you waited so long."

"I called three times," said grandfather, rising slowly to his feet. "I left messages."

"Did you not speak to my assistant?"

"Yes. She said you were not to be disturbed." He coughed and wiped at his lips with a handkerchief. "Even by your own father."

"I had my phone turned off. It was Saya's birthday."

Fujita-san slipped off into the kitchen. I watched her go with a shiver.

"Saya, is it?" Grandfather turned to look at me with a sneer. "Does that child have a hunchback?"

"Yes." Mom set her hand firmly on the back of my neck. "Say goodnight and go to your room, Saya."

I bowed. "Good-ni..."

"Not so fast," said Grandfather. He shuffled up to us and peered closely at me. "Is this the child from the _kappa?"_

"Yes," Mom said without hesitation.

"Disgusting," said my grandmother. "How could you? I was able to call the stories rumors before, but what am I supposed to say now?"

Mom's expression never changed. "Satou-san said you had important news for me from the homeland."

"Not yet," said Grandfather. "We need to discuss... this." He gestured at me. "I heard rumors that you placed this child into our Elite training program. But I didn't hear of her until a few months ago. Why is this? Has she truly been tested? Or is she like the boy?"

"She has killed before and her form is excellent," said my mother. "I would have never entered her into an Elite squad without reason."

I turned to her with wide eyes. She wasn't looking at me.

"She's too small for it, anyway." Grandfather touched my back. "What is this?"

"That is her back, Father."

"Ha."

He turned a circle around me, hunched and pinched up. He reminded me of a hungry coyote I had seen once when I was small—a sharp-edged shadow with a low head and perked ears. I could smell something medicinal on his breath. Then he ripped the neck of my shirt down with a long, knobby finger. So violently did he stretch the fabric that he yanked me down with it. I shuddered and swallowed, but I did not move.

"A shell," he said, pressing his fingertip against the whorls on my scutes. His voice dripped with anger.

Mom slapped his hand away and the pop was so loud that it echoed. The two of them whirled to face each other. The anger on his face was like a thunderhead, dark, immense; his eyes were lost beneath his beetled brows. Mom's anger was like the sun, her face clear and her eyes bright and terrible. I was the dumb animal stuck between them, struck stupid with horror.

"Go to your room, Saya-chan," she said in a monotone voice.

I ducked and sprinted off, taking the little stairwell three steps at a time. I rushed into my room, shut the door, locked it. My face blazed, and there was a sob locked up in my chest that I couldn't release. I rushed into my bathroom and turned on the shower and the bathtub full blast. I stood shaking in the middle of the room, clenching and unclenching my fists, watching my bathtub fill up with water as the shower roared down on top of me. Even the roar of the tap could not hide the raised voices from the dining room. The whole time I felt like there was a burning, throbbing brand where my grandfather had touched me.

I wrapped my arms around myself and closed my eyes.

"Dad," I whispered. "Dad, Dad, Dad."

Like I could wish him there. Like I could summon him just by thinking about him. I could see an image of his face in my mind, but it only made me feel more upset. He wasn't anywhere close to me. He couldn't help me. He was so far away. So I tried to summon every good memory I had of the farm, but it felt so flat, so unreal, like an image on a postcard.

Then I thought of the _kami_ in the green room.

This, for some reason, filled me with a kind of peace, perhaps because it was the freshest in my mind. I was sure at that time of night that no worshippers stood there. It would be quiet. Perhaps the grow lights were turned off so that even they did not hum. The only light would come from the glass window in the ceiling. I imagined that light as a calm, blue thing, and the moon as a plump, friendly face peering in. I imagined crickets creaking, fireflies flashing in the foliage, the little _honden_ sleeping, nestled in its old twisted tree. It was safe. I imagined the yellow light between the pillars. I imagined that it could hear me, and that it cared.

There was a loud clatter in the other room. I lifted my head, shuddering. The bathtub was nearly full, but I didn't want to turn it off. I ripped off my clothes, my cute little hairclips, my nice gold necklace from Fujita-san, and wadded them up and threw them down in front of the door, then stepped into the bath. I wrapped my arms around my chest, closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and sank underneath the surface. The outside world melted away until all I was aware of was the thud of my pulse.

I felt stupid, being so upset. I guess I had just been so close to feeling like a person, with real human friends, and a real human phone, and real human hair and a human shape, and all it had taken was one human being pointing out my non-human parts for me to feel like Quasimodo again.

I broke the surface of the tub, my hair floating around me. It was running over. I let it. I looked down at my weird jointed chest, my weird hands, my weird skin. I was painfully aware of my carapace, its weight, its shape, the way it scraped against the floor and walls of the tub. Even if it were all taken off, I would still look oddly rotund. Even if it were all gone, carved off by a surgeon, my grandfather would have pulled down my shirt and sneered at my scars.

"My strange, otherworldly child," my mother had said. She hadn't expected me to become a human. She knew what I was. She didn't care.

"I'm a mutant," I said softly. "I can take off everything that looks like Dad, but even then, I'll never be a human being."

I stared up at the showerhead, at the rush of water hissing onto the floor. There was a weird strength in saying it.

"I'll never be a human being," I said again. "I'll never be human. I'm a mutant."

It didn't hurt to say it. It was true. I slapped my chest and enjoyed the sound of my hand on bone. I liked this part of me. I liked it not only because it made me feel secure, but because it reminded me of Dad and Mike and Don and Northampton. I liked it and that was enough.

**

I soaked in the hot bathtub for a long time. Eventually I turned off the taps. All I could hear was the trickle of water. No voices. For a moment I had a completely wild thought, a thought about Mom and my grandfather fighting to the death, the flash of knives beneath a drape of heavy shadow, Fujita-san standing over twisted white bodies with clasped hands and bent head.

I wondered what time it was.

I crept out, picked up my clothes, and opened the door. There, sitting on my bed, was my mother. She leaned against the headboard, hands folded across her belly, legs crossed at the shins. There was a silk-wrapped bundle lying on her lap. Normally I would have shrunk from her; I was not wearing clothes. But something in her demeanor had changed. Her eyes were tired, heavy-lidded.

"My father is gone," she said shortly. "He will not touch you again."

I shivered. "You didn't kill him, did you?"

Her smile showed no teeth. "I should have. I will suffer almost as much."

"How?" I asked.

She shrugged and sat up straight.

"Come here," she said, and patted the edge of the bed. "There is a final present."

I sank down on the bed beside her, my clothes still bunched up on my lap. She pushed the wet strands of my hair back, thoughtful, quiet, and then her hand settled on my shoulder.

"Saya-chan," she said. "You have come so far, and without complaint. I am proud of you and your efforts." She extended the bundle. "This is for you."

Breathless, I drew it from her arms. I knew what it was the second I held it. I untied the ribbons and pushed back the silk. Beneath were three sheaths, simple lacquered black affairs. The hilts were wrapped in black fabric and tipped with gold buttons. It was a katana, a _wakizashi,_ and a _tantou:_ a matching set.

"These are yours," she said softly. "Made by one of the last great masters of Japan. Take them on your missions."

"Mom," I whispered, looking up at her with shining eyes. "Thank you. Thank you so much. I'll take good care of them."

"I know you will," she said.

I drew the katana, biting my lips. A rippling texture of silver, charcoal, and white swam down its polished face just like the ones she had given Dad. But unlike Dad's, there was an inscription on the blade. It was mostly _kanji_ , which was my weakest point, and it was dark, so I leaned in and squinted.

"It's your name," she said.

"It's so beautiful."

"Saya-chan." She paused. “Do you know what to do in case of an emergency?”

I turned, brows lowering. “An emergency?”

“The Foot is not stable right now.” She closed her eyes. “The Japanese faction is faltering. I am carrying the organization. My father resents it. The first reason is that he believes that the Foot should remain solely among the Japanese. The second is that he thinks this is a man’s work. He is wrong, of course.” Her eyes flashed open. “He does not see either you or Takeru as fitting heirs and demanded that both of you be expelled. I said no. He said that he would see it done, one way or another.”

I swallowed. “You mean… he’s going to try and kill us?”

“Probably. I will attempt to stay his hand. There are ways to sate his anger. But he is near the end of his life and that has made him mad. The council, too, is not as strong or logical as it has been in the past, and it bends to his every whim. We may be facing a civil war.”

“But… I thought you said you had enough money to…”

“The Foot has always been its own most dangerous enemy.” Her smile was wry. “Now. In case of an emergency.” She rose to her feet. “Come.”

Clutching the katana to my chest, I followed her down the hallway to her room. She led me to her bed and flipped up the comforter. There were drawers built into its sides with brass pulls. She jerked the first one out. There was a keypad on it.

“The code is 0303151250,” she said. “This should be simple for you to remember.”

“Why?”

She laughed. “It’s your birthday. Combined with the street number of an old apartment.” She swung the door open. She withdrew a black clamshell case. When she opened it, a yellow light beamed out across the floor. I held my breath.

“Gene therapy,” she said simply. “Reverse-engineered from your father’s biological material.” She reached into the case. Form-fitting gray foam held twelve large sparkling vials filled with something viscous and shining. She lifted the foam. Beneath it were syringes, neatly lined up in a row.

“I use one of these every month,” she said. “It is not the same stuff that transformed your father; we do not understand all of his mysteries yet. But if I were to receive a mortal wound, and I were to inject four or five of these, it would reduce my chances of dying by at least 50%.” She looked me in the eye. “If it were used on you or the turtles, the effect might be more profound.”

“So the more you use, the more effective it is,” I said.

“Correct.” She smiled coolly.

"So if I get stabbed?" I asked.

"You will know where to go," she said. "Most stab wounds won't kill a human at once, after all. You are even less likely to succumb. So if you can get here in time..." She slipped the clamshell case back under the bed and closed the drawer. "You will be saved."

"Does Takeru know about this?" I asked.

"No."

"Why not?"

"I cannot trust Takeru. And this... this I cannot entrust to just anyone. We are in the middle of talks with pharmaceutical companies and I don't want our materials to end up in the wrong hands."

I hesitated. A horrible dark thought had risen up in me.

"When Dr. Hernandez draws my blood," I asked, "is she experimenting with it?"

Mom paused. "Yes."

I didn't know how I felt. A little horrified. And then I wondered about the pills and shots. A sick emptiness yawned in my belly. The bone of my plastron felt doubly brittle. Suddenly my body didn't feel like my own.

"It's nothing," Mom said. "Just a continuation of what we were doing before."

 _"Dad_ let you draw his blood?"

"Sometimes." She leaned back against her nightstand. "Or samples of his shell or skin, taken from fight scenes."

Without his knowledge, I realized. He had no idea. Trembling, I looked down at the katana in my arms.

"It is nothing," Mom said firmly, gripping my hand. Her knuckles were white. I looked down at her. For a second I was incredulous. Her face was so clear and open. I thought of a beach washed clean by days of rain, the way the atmosphere wavered in such clarity that the stars seemed touchable. I could see her heart through the clearness of her eyes. There was terror there.

 _Don't go,_ it said. _Don't leave me here alone._

"I'm not going back to the Bunker anymore," I said in a low voice.

"Very well," she said.

When I went back to my room, I poured my pills down the toilet and flushed them.

I never went to the Bunker again.


	16. Chapter 16

That first week after my grandfather's visit was hellish. I could barely enjoy my birthday party with Mr. Sugar standing noticeably off in a corner and two bulky Elites flanking the door. Peering through windows and walking through chokepoints felt like matters of life and death. Practice with my squad turned into a production with bodyguards in matching cars and Mr. Sugar supervising all of our sessions. I went everywhere with my new blades on my hips and slept with them at my side. At night, I locked my door and put a chair in front of it. Even then, I rested poorly, and my dreams were full of black-clad murderers.

Takeru started carrying sai. He didn't go out much, skipping school and training alike. I could hear him playing video games in his room day and night with the volume way, way up. The bass and sound of gunfire rattled me. Finally, I banged on his door.

"Put your headphones on!" I shouted. "I couldn't hear an _elephant_ coming with your music up that loud!"

It occurred to me later, much later, that perhaps he had the volume up for that very purpose.

One morning, when I got up to train, I opened my bedroom door only to see him standing outside of it. I had to double-check my clock to make sure I hadn't misread the time. It was 5 AM. I rarely saw him before the early afternoon.

There was empty fear in his face when he looked at me.

"Saya," he said. "If Grandfather comes after us, what are you going to do?"

I heard the unspoken question. _If you have the choice, are you going to let me die?_

"I'm going to fight with you," I said. "So you'd better practice."

I held out my hand, staring him in the eye.

Color flushed his cheeks. He reached out. We shook.

From that time on, we practiced every morning in the exercise room together. He wasn't that great, but he wasn't as shitty as I remembered. In fact, he reminded me a lot of Mike—like he was reclaiming an old skill he had long ago mastered. I wondered if he was actually shitty on purpose, if at some point in his life he'd tried and tried and tried and then burned out.

"Do you have a squad?" I asked one morning while we were stretching.

"No," he said. "I failed out."

"You what?"

"I failed out." He wouldn't look me in the face.

"Why?" I asked.

He shrugged.

"You're not bad," I said. "I mean, it's like, there are some people who just can't understand a skill even if they work at it. But you're not that way. I feel like you know more about _ninjitsu_ than you let on."

"I used to work hard at it." He paused mid-stretch. "I stopped trying. It was useless."

"What was?"

"Getting Mom to love me." He sagged over his knees. A big tear dripped down his nose and he wiped it away furtively. "She doesn't like guys. So she can't like me." He whipped his gaze up to mine. "Don't you _fucking dare_ tell anyone."

"Of course I won't," I said.

"She likes you," he said bitterly. "Because you're a girl. Because you're like Akemi. I think she thinks you're Akemi reincarnated."

"You're kidding."

"No. She said some stuff when I was a kid, stuff about prayers being answered, or dreams she had, or something. I don't remember it all. But even when you were gone, she loved you more than me."

I slumped down on the floor, looking him in the face.

"I'm sorry," I said in a low voice.

He blinked furiously, beating the tears back, but he said nothing.

"Is that why you hate me?" I asked.

He shrugged and dropped to the mat across from me.

We sat knee to knee for a little while, saying nothing and looking at our laps. He sniffled a little and staunched his tears with his sleeves.

"Takeru," I said at last, "we should start over and be friends. I don't want to be enemies. We already have so many."

His eyes brightened and he wiped his nose on his sleeve.

"Deal," he said.

"How much do you know about the Foot? I mean, about the organization, and all the people working in it?"

"Tons!" He grinned. There was a light of pride in his eye. "I'll tell you everything I know."

"Do you know anything about Nakamura Natsuki?" I asked. "If anyone knifes me in the back, I'd bet on her."

"Her?" he said. "I doubt it. The Nakamura family has been on Mom's side for ages. Like, I mean, they've actually sacrificed standing with the Japanese faction to work with her. Maybe you don't realize it, but Mom made sure you'd get into a group with safe squad mates."

"Wait, really?"

"Yeah. She knows you're too trusting and you don't have a lot of experience with other people."

"I... I... wait!"

He started laughing at me. I turned red all the way down to my collar.

"I'm not too trusting at all!" I said.

"I heard her telling Fujita-san, and I quote: 'She's been alone too long and she's got his damnable openness on top of that.'"

My cheeks blazed. "Openness! The last thing my dad has ever been is open."

He laughed. "I'm just telling you what she said. Anyway, she chose from families that she knew were already established on our side time and time again, and she chose foreigners who would side with the American faction first. You can probably trust Nakamura-san."

"Probably."

"Look, it's not the people who hate you openly you should be afraid of," he said. "If Nakamura-san really wanted to hurt you, she'd probably act like a friend first."

"You mean I should distrust, like... the Yamaguchis?"

"Nah. The Yamaguchi family has sacrificed more than the Nakamuras have," said Takeru. "They're known for cracking jokes and being pleasant, like, all the time. Even while they're cutting someone in half."

 _A family of Mikes,_ I thought. And suddenly I had a realization. It hit me hard. When Dad was getting so angry about Mike flipping me onto the ground during practice... Mike wasn't just playing. That was literally Mike's strength. Mike dropping my guard with a barrage of jokes, shielding himself with his own weakness, and throwing me down because I had assumed too little of him. I hadn't respected him enough.

I shivered.

"What about Dickens and Perez?" I asked.

"Dickens found out that some of his classmates were snitches and turned them in to us. Kind of a big deal because he'd grown up with them and they were the ones to introduce him to the Foot. Perez's parents didn't want her involved with us, so she dumped them and came to live at the Clubhouse."

"You mean her parents are _looking_ for her?"

"Yeah. She's not going by her original name and she moves from Clubhouse to Clubhouse pretty often."

"How do you know all of this?"

"Everybody's got a dossier around here."

"Even me?" I asked.

"Especially you," he said.

"Can I see it?" I asked.

"Mom might let you, if you ask. Or you can just do what I do and pay a hacker or an office drone. There are a couple I trust here in the organization."

I leaned back and considered the ceiling. I felt like my stomach had fallen out.

"I can't imagine abandoning my family," I said softly.

"Big sacrifices mean big trust," said Takeru. "And trust is worth more than gold around here."

**

My squad’s first mission was at the end of May. We started preparing two weeks in advance. Hair longer than our ears was chopped off. My hair had stopped growing; cutting it short was nerve-wracking. Then we were sized and had our measurements taken. We were issued a black _hakama_ with all its underthings, padded cloth armor, breastplates with the Foot emblem over the heart, and black masks. I was grateful that it wasn't form-fitting like the _dougi_ of the lower ranks, but I felt weird and fat, especially standing next to Nakamura. And Nakamura always stood next to me. Flynn made sure of it. We were a pair made in comedy heaven—willowy, long-legged Nakamura, whose every strike seemed imbued with grace, and me, squat and round and short, with a punch more like an exclamation point than poetry.

We were briefed in our practice room. Flynn brought a tablet and laid it on the floor, showing us the floor plan. The mission was simple: patrol a warehouse on a dock where Watanabe Shipping held sway and look for trouble. We visited it once in the daytime in plainclothes, looking like nothing more than a gaggle of schoolchildren. The location was exceedingly safe. The cargo was innocuous, the territory secure. There would be no trouble. So it was that in the middle of the night, armed with our weapons of choice and sandwiched by my bodyguards' black vehicles, Flynn drove us from the gym down toward the river.

“Ninjas in a van,” hissed Eiji, turning around to look at those of us in the back seats. He had tied a red bandanna around his forehead.

“Yeah, so?” Dickens asked, stifling a yawn.

“So ninjas in a van!” Eiji said. “It’s my new band name.”

“Japanese only,” Flynn said, although her voice was not as cold as it could have been. She wore the full outfit of an Elite and set her hat on the dash. Her hair had been freshly buzzed and there were new thunderbolts jagging over her ears.

We all broke into laughter intermittently on the drive over, not always because someone was cracking jokes. The situation was ridiculous. We laughed about how politely we stopped at red lights… as a van full of ninjas. We laughed about how we could go through a drive-through and order ice cream… as a van full of ninjas. We laughed about driving beside a police car… as a van full of ninjas. Dickens began chewing at his mask from the inside to make himself look like a weird wet-mouthed sock puppet monster and expanded his jaw as far as it would go. Perez turned her mask completely around and pulled tufts of her hair through the eyeholes. Eiji borrowed a red bandanna from Daichi and added it to his own, then turned both of his bandannas around so that the knots stood out over his eyes. Monster noises and raspberries were made in abundance. Nakamura alone did not partake; sitting primly in one of the front seats with Eiji and Daichi, she rested her chin on her hand and watched the lights pass by.

Once we’d parked outside of the warehouse, Flynn turned the car off and looked over her shoulder at us. The giggling immediately stopped and we all sat at attention, masks half-cocked and bandannas askew.

“Truly,” Flynn said in dry English, “the Elite ranks of the Foot have never seen recruits the like of these.”

Once we had straightened ourselves out, Dickens still with a wrinkled wet spot over his mouth, we stepped out onto the blacktop. The warehouse sat on a canal snaking away from the river. We could just see the Hudson, black as oil, the lights from the city thrown across its face like paint. The fishy, briny stink was overpowering, and the night was hot and humid. The only true relief was the cool breeze sweeping over the water.

Flynn and Sugawara took a moment to strap on their hats. When they looked back up at us, a chill ran through me. With their high collars pulled up, you couldn’t see the expressions on their faces. With the short capes lifted up by their pauldrons, a visual line cut across their chests that cast an illusion of breadth. With the spread of their hats' brims and their breastplates, they appeared twice as big. There was something deliciously terrifying about them.

“This way,” Flynn said. Even her voice sounded more foreboding.

Behind us, my bodyguards' vehicles opened up. Fully-uniformed Elites poured out, utterly noiseless. We were followed at a respectful distance. Then they scattered around the building and melted into the shadows.

"Flynn-san," Nakamura said, "if there is trouble, we won't even get to find it because Watanabe-san's men will first."

Flynn turned her head only slightly. I could barely see the bridge of her nose and the pale arc of her eye.

"Then look for her men," said Flynn.

The hair stood up on the back of my neck. I didn't even know who these people were and apparently I owned them.

The warehouse was closed up tight. We headed toward a single door lit by a single light. Flynn picked the lock, opened it quietly, used a piece of dark, polished plastic to look above and from side to side, and then she beckoned us in. We slid in single file, followed by Sugawara, who quietly shut the door behind us and locked it again. Although we could have turned on the lights, part of the challenge was working in the dark. The roof was lined with windows, but the moon was new, so they offered only the city's dim light; the ceilings were lost in long shadows. It occurred to me that if someone wanted to get us, the girders up near the roof would be the place to go.

In the daytime, the warehouse had been a rather pleasant place. Big receiving doors had stood open, casting clean rivers of summer light across the floor. All the lights had been on and the sun smiled through the windows. Workers had been driving forklifts and moving products into totes and packing boxes, conversing loudly in English and Spanish. Music screamed from random corners of the building—rap here, hard rock there, Spanish pop over near the offices.

But in the nighttime, the warehouse was a haunting, claustrophobic place. The silence was so thick that even the smallest sounds echoed, and most of the lights had been dimmed or turned off completely. Shadows stood in pools and loomed in corners. Most unsettling was the layout. At no point could you see everything. In the front of the building were taped off squares where product was unloaded from ships and sorted; there were narrow passages between each stack wide enough for a single person to stand. Past that, towers of product stretched all the way to the ceiling, from hanging t-shirts to shrink-wrapped pallets. A space large enough for forklifts passed between each tower. I thought it would be easy for someone to lie top of products, or squeeze between them, or army-crawl beneath the towers. The ceiling and towers were so high that your view was limited the minute you passed between them. You were cut off by both sight and sound. And because there was so much variation in the products themselves, it was also easy for your senses to become overwhelmed: too many colors, textures, patterns. Easy for somebody to disappear into that visual riot, especially if you didn't expect to see anyone there at all.

I pinched myself. This was Dad's paranoia, I told myself, not mine. It was a warehouse, and a normal warehouse at that, full of textiles. Nobody gave a flying fuck about textiles.

Sugawara stepped up beside Flynn and the two split. We followed our respective leaders, as had been planned. Eiji, Perez, and Dickens went with Flynn. Sugawara was followed by Nakamura, Daichi, and me. Flynn and her team scaled the second row of towers, quick as squirrels; Sugawara headed straight down between towers A and B. Even though I was a good climber, I was difficult to lift, so I was relegated to floor duty.

I didn't like it. I felt doubly exposed. Perhaps up high I would have been an easy target for a man with a gun, but I could have started calculating lines of sight and had a broader view of the warehouse's floor plan. On a lower level, an attacker's vision would have been limited by the sheer size of the towers. Much better to be up high, where I could have been the one in wait.

Every now and then I heard a soft rustling as one of my compatriots on the top of the tower scuffed plastic. Nakamura and I were to keep our eyes on the right side while Sugawara and Daichi kept their eyes peeled on the left. I felt stupidly jumpy. I clenched the hilt of my katana the entire time.

We crossed over to row three. Above, Flynn's team jumped to tower D. _Kind of silly,_ I thought. If someone saw us here they'd think we were LARPing or something. Who cares about t-shirts? What if one of the workers came in early? Was this a common occurrence? Did new employees have to be briefed on what happened if ninjas trained in the warehouse? Would they know who we were? What if they called the police? What could you possibly say to the police if they showed up? "Yeah, we're just training to be ninjas, that's all. Gotta protect those novelty beach towels with my life, officer."

My eye passed over one row of boxes after another. Here and there I saw a stamp or sticker signifying that a product had passed inspection. _Ninja-approved,_ I thought, and cracked a smile. I carefully put the phrase aside to give to Eiji later.

By row nine, my shoulders hurt from the constant tension and my fist was sweaty from clenching the hilt so long. Every t-shirt suggested a human shape and every pallet shielded a crouched villain, so after a measly fifteen minutes I could barely process what I was seeing anymore. My eye had started sliding over features in the towers without recognition. I forced myself to go back over them. Surely one of Mom’s Elites lay in wait somewhere nearby. Maybe it was even going to be a test for us. Maybe…

I heard a chirp. It was such a small sound, like a cricket. What was not small was the loud crack against the lip of my shell.

The impact echoed sharply. Without thinking, I dropped flat on the floor. My teammates fell with me. I heard Flynn's group rustling above us. And across from me, beneath the tower, I saw feet. Nakamura's breath hitched. She saw them too. They were soundlessly padding toward us, stepping heel to toe. The shoes were traditional _geta,_ toes split by _tabi_ socks.

A strange sense of relief rushed over me. Grandfather's assassins, at last.

The entire episode must have taken only a few seconds, but it felt like a hundred years. I knew what to do. My whole body tensed like a spring. I launched up from the floor, bounded over the top of a pallet, and threw myself bodily into the ninja on the other side.

I caught a flash of a man dressed all in black, the pouches of a utility belt, and in one hand, a _tantou._ I'm not sure what he saw of me. He was nearly twice my size, but I knew from long experience that he would expect me to be much weaker and lighter. He flung his arms out to deflect me and spun out of the way, but he wasn't fast enough, and he didn't use enough force to thrust me off-balance. I had drawn my _wakizashi_ on the way over the pallet. As he deflected me, his _tantou_ bouncing uselessly off of my shell, I slashed. My _wakizashi_ bit through his arm, slicing cleanly through the padded armor below his delts. I rolled away, followed by a spattering trail of blood.

He grunted, swore softly. As I tumbled to my feet, I became aware of a second person rising to her feet beside me. It was Nakamura. She had followed me over the pallet, flying right as I had flown left. Her _wakizashi_ was drawn and dripping. We turned together like two cogs in the same machine, and there was the assassin, whirling to face us, his breathing harsh with rage or pain or both. One of his hands was clapped beneath his arm, glistening black with blood. I realized that when he had spun to deflect me, Nakamura had flanked him and plunged her _wakizashi_ underneath his raised arm.

There was a major artery there.

Flynn perched on the second level of the tower behind him, flanked by her team. Sugawara crouched between two pallets, her hand pressed up against the plastic. Daichi peeked around her, _nunchaku_ clenched in hand. None of them moved. Or perhaps it was that time had slowed down so dramatically that they hadn't moved yet. I wasn't sure. I was only keenly aware that the assassin might be mortally wounded, but he still had time, and he still had teeth.

Did it matter how good he was? Did it matter how small we were? There were still eight of us and one of him. Nakamura flashed toward him on his left. I darted for his right side. As we raced for him, Flynn drew her katana—and jumped over us. Haltingly, her team followed her. They landed on the other tower and then melted away. This distracted the assassin, who swept his _tantou_ up to guard from an attack that never came.

The assassin could not face us all, and that moment that he had turned to face Flynn gave us all the time we needed. Nakamura reached him first, a flurry of slices aimed for his arm, his side, any part she could reach. He spun to face her only to receive my _wakizashi_ in his ribs. High on adrenaline, he must not have realized I hit him at once, because he kept spinning to follow Nakamura's trajectory. I jerked my blade out as he pivoted away and hot blood splashed across my face. He shoved Nakamura with a brutal twist and smashed her into a stack of pallets. I slashed him up and down, aiming for the joints in his padded armor, for his face, for his hands. Daichi jumped him at the same time, cracking him in the elbow, bludgeoning him in the temple. Daichi's final blow was what felled him.

Eyes blanking, the assassin went down without a sound. I followed him. Dropping knees-first on his shoulders using all of my weight, I jerked his head back and slit his throat. Pale skin parted in a mockery of a smile. Lurching back to life, he grabbed at me with his uninjured hand, but Sugawara slammed her foot down on his elbow, and Daichi stamped on his other arm. As his hips swung up, prepared to pin his knees around my head, Nakamura tackled his legs and pinned them together. He jerked helplessly back and forth, gurgling, coughing.

He choked to death on his own blood beneath us. We watched him die.

**

We didn't go back to the van immediately. We turned on all the lights in the building and met in the employee break room. The counter was a riot of microwaveable lunch cartons and coffee mugs. Faded posters and policy printouts were the only decorations. The politely bland faces of uniformed workers smiled down upon us without knowledge.

"Don't sit down," Flynn warned us. She made us stretch out our _hakama_ and shake them out. When I shook my _hakama,_ she reached down between the thick pleats and plucked out three thin black darts.

"Fortunate, Watanabe-san," she said. "Turn around."

Embedded in my scutes and armor were three more darts, and there was one stuck in the lip of my shell, just over my collarbone. She jerked each one out and laid them on one of the cheap plastic tables, gingerly handling each one by their middles. Then she smoothed out the back of my kimono. I could feel the give of the fabric. The assassin's _tantou_ had sliced straight through the fabric and revealed the whorling scutes, glassy jade green and mottled brown. I felt naked.

No one else had been darted. It was just me. I didn't remember being struck a second time, much less seven times in a row, but it occurred to me that I was so distracted by the approaching assassin that I hadn't thought to look for someone aiming at me from far away. That had probably been the aim all along. One man to distract us while another took as many potshots as possible.

"This is why we wear armor," said Flynn with a bitter smile.

I couldn't smile back at her. I was shaking. Not only because I had been spared death, but because it had been so long since I'd killed someone. And in the same way, too. Except this time I had been sitting on his chest, looking down into his face as he choked and foamed. The adrenaline that had slowed my perception of time had also made his death last an eternity. I hadn't been able to see his face through the mask, but I had felt the stubborn throb of his heart, and that had been individual enough.

 _Did he have children?_ I wondered. _A family? Certainly a mother and a father. Will they miss him?_

Flynn made some calls on her phone. I heard something about "cleanup" and "assassination attempt." The Elites who had guarded the outside of the building swept through after us. We could see them through the break room windows making a thorough search of the building. They dragged two body bags out into the night.

We sat in stony silence for a while, catching our breaths, sucking at our water bottles, cleaning our weapons with paper towels from the automatic dispenser by the sink. No one looked at or talked to anyone else; there was only a shared sense of deflation. Nakamura slumped nearby, Sugawara giving her a thorough look-over. Nakamura was bruised from head to foot and winced every time Sugawara prodded her, but otherwise made no sound.

After the warehouse had been searched and the vans thoroughly checked for malicious tampering, we commandeered one of my bodyguards' vehicles and drove back to the gym. The silence was heavy and the cab stank of blood. We sagged when we reached our classroom and sat in a sad, sloppy line against the wall. Dickens was crying and tried to hide his tears in the corners of his eyes.

Flynn, hat in hand, stood before us. Her eyes were pale and terrible. Sugawara reclined against the wall behind her, head lowered.

"Before this day," Flynn said, "how many of you saw someone die?"

Perez raised her hand slowly. I raised my hand, too.

"How many of you have killed before?" she asked.

Perez's hand dropped. My hand trembled in the air by itself.

"I thought so," she said. "Does it feel good, Watanabe-san?"

"No," I said.

"How many times have you killed, Watanabe-san?"

I shrugged. I could remember each person I had killed and each animal, too. And there had been some I hadn't been sure about, some that could have gone either way, but I hadn't stuck around to see how it went.

"More than one." Flynn smiled at me. It was genuine for once, and had a kind of warmth. "But it grows easier."

"Yes, _sensei."_

"It had to be done," Flynn said.

"Yes," I said.

"It isn't a small matter." Flynn shrugged. "It’s all right to be disturbed. To some degree, it’s even healthy. But this is a hill you must learn to climb. Remember that there will be more like this. If it is something you cannot stomach… you may always leave.”

No one said anything. Her eye roved over us slowly, thoughtfully.

“Very well,” she said. “This is early for deaths, but it happens. We were fortunate tonight. Some of us could have been among the dead. But we weren't. This is testimony to your training and your skill."

We sat up a little straighter.

"You will have the next two weeks off to heal," said Flynn. "Relax. You have earned it."

**

We meandered out into the hallway, subdued. The morning was gray with the newly risen sun. None of us quite wanted to look at each other, but we also didn't feel like being alone. We slowly put on our shoes at the _genkan._ Nobody got their phones out at once. Nobody spoke. I saw Nakamura wincing against the wall, leaning over with a stiffened back and awkward shoulders. She was trying to tie her shoes. I limped over to her and knelt at her feet.

"Here," I said. "Let me tie them."

"Uh," she said, looking horrified.

I didn't ask for her permission. I began to tighten her laces.

"Thanks," I said without looking up. "For having my back."

"It's nothing," she said, sounding embarrassed. "We're supposed to work together."

I looked up at her. Her face was flushed, her eyes averted. There were nasty bruises and scrapes running up and down her cheek and neck down into her shirt.

"You didn't have to, though," I said. "You fought really well."

She laughed and winced when she did, then held her finger up against her eye to dab away a tear.

"This is my fault," I said softly.

Nakamura shook her head. She extended her hand as I finished tying the laces, and helped me to my feet. Her hands were rough with calluses, her knuckles yellow with old bruising.

"I guess so, but who cares?" Nakamura said. "It's good practice. Like Flynn-san said, there will be more like this. It had to happen sometime. Might as well be now."

I smiled at her. She smiled at me. That was when I realized I was still holding her hand. We both started laughing a little nervously, and I let go.

 


	17. Chapter 17

Mr. Sugar was not the only person to pick me up that morning. Two bodyguards flanked me in the back seat and a third sat shotgun. It was an awkward ride. The Elites seemed to look anywhere but at me, and I kept my eyes down on my lap, where my blood-soaked uniform lay wrapped in plastic bags.

When I got to the apartment, Fujita-san brought me a full breakfast of everything I liked. Hot English Breakfast tea with too much sugar; boiled eggs, the yolks crumbly and dry; orange juice; pancakes slathered with butter and hot syrup. I ate methodically, slowly, savoring what the dead could not.

"Where's Mom?" I asked at last. "Does she know?"

"She knows," said Fujita-san. "She's in Japan right now."

I had a bad feeling.

I bathed for a long time. My bath brush hooked on the rough chop across my shell. It was something I'd have to pay attention to later. I felt no bruising in the muscle below it; a small victory.

When I finally crawled into bed, I only napped for a little while before a combination of tension and the sun woke me up. It was noon. I recalled one of those weird waking dreams that I only had when I was hyperalert. The sunlight fell in bright chinks across my blanket; I could see a loose hair looped on my sleeve; I could look into the hall through my open door; I could appraise the texture of the carpet. Accompanying this photorealistic scene was a sense of distance, a detachment. When Dad had asked me questions in these states, it would take me what felt like an eternity to open my mouth, and what came out did not really make sense.

A dusky rat in a maroon _yukata_ stood at my door, staring down at me with cocked ears and wriggling nose. His eyes glowed like the full moon and were far too large for his face. I couldn't stare at him straight on, but only look somewhere to the left of him. He said something in a garbled voice that I couldn't understand, a voice I could only feel, like a TV anchor's muffled speech in another room, or the way sounds travel to you underwater. At first I felt like he was telling me a story. I could feel rather than know the plot points; they were accompanied by the rise and fall of his voice. Following the plot was like trying to watch a cartoon through a sheet of wax paper.

At the end, as I began to wake up, my eyes slid away from him; I could not even look at his shadow. His voice grew more and more understandable. I heard a particle, a noun, a string of verbs. And then his voice, breath whistling through his teeth. I understood it, but it was muttered, ghastly, inhuman.

A pang of horror jabbed through my guts.

 _Wake up!_ I thought. _Wake up! WAKE UP!_

Sucking air, I fought my way back to the living world. My chest constricted. I felt like I was staggering up out of a sea of cotton. When I finally raised my head, it was to see an empty room and an empty hallway. I half-crawled, half-stumbled across the room and began to search the apartment. Of course there was no giant rat anywhere. Why would there be?

Heart thudding, I sank into the couch in the living room, striped in light from the half-shuttered windows. It took me half an hour to shake the fuzzy feeling. As for the sensation of impending doom, it lingered long after.

I was very sure that I had been visited by the ghost of my grandfather, and that he had told me that my father was going to die.

**

I had just selected a Disney film to salve my soul when Mom called my phone. She had never called me before. I picked up the phone with numb hands.

"Mom?"

"Saya. How are you?"

That voice. There was such tightly reined anger in it that it bulged out at the seams.

"I'm fine."

"You killed?"

"With my team, yes."

"They have IDed the bodies. They were my father's men."

"I thought so," I said softly.

She laughed in a low voice. God, what awful laughter it was. More like an open-mouthed snarl.

"He will pay for it," she said. "Do not leave the apartment until I tell you to."

"I won't," I said.

"Good," she said, and hung up.

Takeru poked his head out of the door. "Was that Mom?"

"Yeah. She tell you stay put, too?"

"Yeah."

"I don't like this," I said.

"Me neither," he said. "She's always hated Grandfather, and he's always hated her, but..." He opened his mouth and closed it.

“Not like this?” I asked.

“Not like this,” he said.

**

Minutes dripped by. Fujita-san did not leave that night. She spent her time cleaning with a religious zeal I had never seen before. As for Takeru and me, we sat together in the living room and watched movie after movie, too nervous to sleep and too tired to train. Every now and then I woke from a microsleep with a start. Once I caught Takeru looking down at me, concern etched on his face. He looked away as soon as I caught him.

Fujita-san prepared us a simple meal and made us go to bed at ten. I rolled myself up on a futon on Takeru's floor, and he locked the door. We slept with our weapons by our sides. Fujita-san slept on the sofa.

On the morning of the second day, Takeru and I were sitting on the sofa, watching cartoons. He fiddled with his phone. I sketched idly in a notebook. I kept drawing pictures of rats, rats in _yukata,_ rats with long whiskers and oversized eyes. Some of them I tried to shade in the ways my art book had suggested, but they ended up too dark and featureless, like shadow people. At the end, I started drawing over the same lines until I tore holes in the paper, and flipped the page to see what kinds of half-born images I had made on the other side.

Suddenly, the front door slammed open. A weird breeze rushed ahead of it. For some reason I thought of the puff of air on my forehead before the _honden._ Takeru and I jerked to attention so roughly that he threw his phone and I ripped a page in half.

"Fujita-san," Mom called. "Children."

I hadn't liked her angry voice, but I didn't much like her joyous one, either. It was almost a drunken thing. Takeru and I crept into the kitchen, shoulder to shoulder; Fujita-san stood in the doorway to the _tatami_ room. Mother stood before us, her hand relaxed on a chair, her eyes shining. She towered before us in a jet black pantsuit. We gazed upon her like serfs upon a queen.

"What happened?" I asked.

She laughed. "The Foot is mine now," she said. "I will be resting in my room."

She swaggered between us. We had to step aside to give her space. She traced her hands over our shoulders, looked down at us with a smug expression, and then swayed up the hallway and was gone.

"What do you think?" I asked Takeru.

"I don't know," he whispered.

We both turned to Fujita-san. She shook her head and helplessly opened her hands. The open wings of the gilded cabinet in the _tatami_ room reflected a bar of afternoon light across her body and turned her outline to gold.

**

The day seemed too long. We ate dinner alone and watched movies until Fujita-san shooed us to bed. Fujita-san was close-lipped, but her fear was all over her face. She carried a little _tantou_ in a pretty blue sheath and constantly glanced at the front door.

"Should we put a chair in front of it?" I asked her.

She shook her head no. I put one of the nice dining room chairs in front of it when she wasn't looking.

The next morning dawned after an interminable length of microsleeps and nightmares. I cannot begin to describe the isolation to you. We never opened the door and we couldn't hear anything but the whir of the air conditioner. We were too well insulated from the city to hear anything outside. From certain angles in the apartment, I could see the creeping movement of vehicles and foot traffic down below, but this seemed more like a distant memory or a movie scene, not like the real world. Only the daily news was a sign that the globe kept spinning. At one point, Takeru flipped to a 24-hour news station from Japan and we watched for stories about the Foot. There was nothing.

I felt like we were the last people on Earth.

The group chat had been uncharacteristically silent since our mission. I hadn't missed it at first; my dread had left me closed up and wordless. But by degrees, a gaping hunger for human interaction consumed me, a hunger like fear. I finally grabbed my phone and opened my messages, staring at my inbox until the screen dimmed. I tapped a greeting out, grimaced, and erased it. I reworded it and added an emoji. It seemed too trite. I deleted it again.

"What's going on?" I asked at last. I had meant it to be a good-natured opening. The minute I hit "Send," I knew it wouldn't look that way.

Nakamura answered in a private text. "Don't you know?"

I hesitated, my mouth dry, before tapping out an answer.

"I think my mom did something bad," I said.

"She gutted your grandparents," Nakamura said. "She and her Elites killed half of the council. It's civil war for sure."

I swallowed. "What does that mean?"

There was a long pause. I decided that either she wasn't going to answer at all, or it was going to be a monster of a text. Instead, I received a belated sentence.

"I don't know," she said.

**

Mom gathered us together that afternoon. Takeru and I sat down beside one another in the dining room, Fujita-san standing at the foot of the table with a fretful expression. Mom took the head of the table, like always. She was dressed in black and gold, long legs crossed in front of her, head thrown back. For the first time, I noticed that there was a mottled bruise on her wrist traveling up into her sleeve, and crescent-shaped scabs on the back of her right hand.

"It is time I told you what happened," she said.

Takeru and I glanced at each other.

"I have taken the Foot from my father and the council," she said evenly. "The center of our operations will move here. There are several important tasks that will require my full attention for the next few months. I may not be here very often, if at all. I will not lie. It will be dangerous for you both."

"Why?" I asked.

"There is still a portion of the Foot that believes my position is illegitimate. You see, I did not wait for Father to die." Her smile was tight-lipped. "They will try to kill you. They will fail. I will hunt them down. But it will take time."

"But what if they hurt you?" I asked softly.

"Then they hurt me," she said. Her face softened. "I have done this once before, Saya. I will do it again. I know Japan much better than I knew New York."

Dad’s voice came to me suddenly. _“A lot can change in ten years,”_ it said.

"What about training?" I asked.

"What about school?" Takeru asked.

"You will both have bodyguards," she said. "But there will be no missions for Saya until this matter is taken care of."

**

Nothing changed at once. For two weeks, Takeru and I never left the apartment. I didn't see Mr. Sugar or my tutors, and the group chat was still dead. Fujita-san left after the first week to get groceries, but she didn't go the usual route through the family elevator; she used the staff elevator in the back of the kitchen, and she went with dark glasses and her head covered in a floral-print scarf.

In mid-June, we began creeping out again. I started seeing my tutors again. My guards had doubled in number, and a few of them had guns. I thought the gym seemed oddly silent. Even Tomoe-san jumped when I came through the door. At training, my squad sat together on the tatami in heavy silence. No one smiled; few spoke. Our camaraderie felt disjointed and threadbare. The presence of Mr. Sugar and his black-clad posse against the wall did not help the mood any.

Neither Flynn nor Sugawara seemed to care. Without looking at my bodyguards, Flynn knelt before us, laid down a map of the warehouse on printer paper, and immediately brought up our last mission. She explained how and where we went wrong, tapping on entrances with her index finger.

"The assassins must have come in before we arrived and waited for us," she said. "We didn't keep the mission a secret, and that was our downfall. We also did not examine beneath the shelves. A small detail, but an important one."

I had been suspicious of Dad's paranoia. But Dad would have also been correct. In fact, hadn't Dad been proved right again and again? Maybe paranoia didn't make sense for most people, but most people didn't have contract killers out for their blood, either.

It was Nakamura who posted the first article about the Foot to the group text. Rumors of the elder Watanabe's deaths, but no evidence. Their mansion cleared out and put up for sale, their staff dismissed. Several key members of the council, also gone. Whole families vanished. A whisper of daggers and poison; no bodies, only sudden disappearances. The article featured a brand new picture of Mom, eyes glittering as she leered down at her photographer. I'd never seen her gleeful before, and if there was a god, I'd never see her gleeful again.

**

In early July, I was in the _tatami_ room doing my homework when I heard Takeru come home from school. When he slammed the door, the pressure shook the shoji doors. I sat straight up. The door had stood open longer than it should have for the entry of a single person. There was a clatter somewhere in the kitchen, and a sound like cabinets slamming shut. I couldn't tell what was going on. I stood and listened. The hair rising on the back of my neck. Minutes passed. I heard footbeats, and then nothing.

My hand instinctively fell to my hip and clasped on air. My heart stuttered. When I had gone to pick up my notebooks from my desk, I had accidentally left my weapons in my bedroom.

“Where is the little cunt, anyway?” a boy asked. From the way his voice echoed, they must have been near the living room.

“I don't know,” Takeru said. His voice slurred.

I carefully, quietly tucked my book under my arm and slipped into the greenhouse. I hadn't been there for weeks. The windows were too open and I had thirsted for the safety of walls. Stepping into it was unexpectedly refreshing. The sunlight embraced me. I had the sensation that the greenery was leaning down, as though it had been waiting for my return. The gardener had left a tray full of tools on the ground; I silently set the book down, then picked up the shears and a screwdriver.

“I want to see her face,” said the boy. “Does she really look like a turtle?”

“Not really,” Takeru said. He was talking too loudly now. "Saya?"

"Don't," said the boy.

I heard footsteps rapidly approaching the greenhouse, and I ducked into the foliage. Two boys stepped in, one of them with his arm around Takeru's throat. The one on the right was white with golden hair and blue eyes—the kind of person you’d see passing the turkey in a Rockwell painting. The boy holding Takeru was Japanese and wore a wristband stamped with the symbol of the Foot. Both of them were wiry, slender, hard with muscle. Just by the way they moved I realized that they were ninja.

“Come on!” Takeru said, struggling with his captor's arm. “What do you care? She’s just a little kid.”

"That's not what I've heard," said the Japanese boy.

“I want to see her,” said the blonde boy. “I want to see if she’s got a shell, like they say.”

“I said she's not here," snapped Takeru.

“And I said I wanted to see your ugly sister,” said the blonde boy. He looked down at my book, touched the cover, then glanced through the foliage. I had already flattened myself against the floor. I didn’t look straight at him, but off to the side. People can feel when you’re looking at them.

“I see her,” said the Japanese boy softly. He fingered something in his pocket.

I froze. He was definitely looking in my direction, but I wasn’t sure if he actually saw me or was trying to flush me out. My t-shirt was eggshell-blue, not exactly camouflage.

“Where?” The blonde boy leaned and stared.

The Japanese boy pointed and we met eyes.

I slowly backed up, creeping on fingers and toes.

The blonde boy started laughing and tromped toward me. “Oh my god.”

“Jacob! Leave her alone!” snapped Takeru. “She’s just a stupid kid.” Horror had crept into his voice.

I didn’t run. It just triggers the chase. So I pushed myself to my feet and backed away just fast enough to stay ahead of him.

“Leave me alone,” I said.

“I will as soon as you show me your back,” said Jacob. His grin stretched ear to ear. “I just want to see if you’ve got a shell.”

I saw the way they thrust their hands into their pockets. I recognized the shapes pressed between their fingers. Takeru's face was white, and he was staring at me, willing me to read his mind. I understood.

“I will kill you,” I said.

Jacob only laughed. The Japanese boy’s arms tightened across Takeru’s chest and throat. He reached down slowly toward Takeru’s waistband, flipped up the edge of his t-shirt, and withdrew his sai.

Takeru blanched and his hands shook; with a puppet-like jerk he thrust against his captor’s folded arm. I recognized the move he was trying to use—something that would have broken a chokehold. But the Japanese boy had been trained in the same art and merely shifted his grip, like a mother jostling a struggling toddler into a more stable position. He whipped the sai up against Takeru's solar plexus, the points pressing into his abdomen.

Loathing boiled up in my belly.

“Don't you touch him,” I hissed, putting all of my heart into it.

“What are you doing?” Takeru asked in a high-pitched voice.

“What do you think?” the Japanese boy asked.

Jacob dropped into a sprint and flashed toward me. At the same time, Takeru kicked off, and he and his captor staggered up the steps and tumbled back into the _tatami_ room. Hard bodies hit the floor; doors slammed; feet pounded against carpet; Takeru screamed for the Elites. I had a feeling they wouldn’t come.

I ducked and spun around Jacob. His arm whooshed over my head so closely that his nails grazed my scalp. It was like sparring Don: fast, fast, fast, each stance and blow beautifully precise, and the entire time he was grinning like I was the biggest joke he’d ever seen. The building stress of the past few months was no friend to me. He bashed me in the shoulder on the third swing, and I barely blocked the fourth—a strike that cracked against my forearms. I wasn’t fast enough to dodge the fifth blow, either, but I had an ounce of luck; that strike grazed my cheek and cracked into the lip of my shell. He jerked his fist away with a hiss—I think he broke something.

Just enough time for me to throw a one-two punch of my own: the first right into his dick, the second an uppercut to the jaw when he instinctively buckled down. Blood spurted out between his lips as he bit through his tongue, and he must have blacked out for a second because he staggered back and fell to one knee. I launched into him and we crashed to the floor together. I jerked the screwdriver out of the hem of my pants. Jacob came to just as I jammed it through his temple. He didn’t even scream. He swung and clocked me. Blinking away stars, I rolled away and ripped the shears out of my pocket.

He lurched to his feet. Only then did he seem to realize that something was off. His trembling hand rose to the handle jutting out of his skull.

“Bitch!” he gasped.

I spat blood, hiding the shears behind my hip. Some of my teeth were loose. But no time for that. Takeru would surely get knifed sooner rather than later, and that would mean two on one, and there was no way I could handle that. So I charged him.

He was way off this time. I think he was having trouble seeing. I concentrated on his every strike, moving closer and closer. Dodge. Block. Block. Dodge. He winced and his guard drew up a second too late. That was when I drove into him, stabbing the shears right up between his ribs. He smashed his fist down on my skull over and over; from afar, I felt the pressure, but I didn’t feel the pain. When he went down, I was on top of him again, leaning on his windpipe. I jerked the shears out and thrust for the artery in his throat. The cords of muscle tensed as I buried the blades between them. When I jerked them out, a spurt of blood followed. He flailed madly at me, digging his nails into my arms.

No, I realized dimly. Not just his nails. A knife. He’d been knifing me the entire time. Suddenly I realized that I was drenched in blood and it was all mine. I rolled away from his spastically twitching body. For a few minutes, I watched the life jet out of him. It was clouding the goldfish water a pale pink; the stupid creatures congregated in our shadows and begged for food.

I waited until Jacob’s writhing slowed to a brainless twitch. He was lying comatose on the ground in a pool of his blood. He was still breathing, but it was faint, his heartbeat rapid, his skin cold. I jerked out the screwdriver and patted him down, then withdrew a nice knife. I set the shears down and pattered across the _tatami_ room, leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind me. I was in that strange empty place where I was the only actor on a stage full of automatons.

I crept to the tatami room and peered in. No one was there, but there were glistening freckles seeping into the mats. I ducked into the living room, wiping my gory hands on the pristine carpet. Fujita-san had left a few cream-colored fabric napkins for us on the end table; I tied one around my forehead like a bandanna to keep the blood and loose flaps of skin from dripping into my eyes.

Upstairs, I heard someone whispering.

I crept up the stairs. When I was at the top, I peeked up slowly. The Japanese boy leaned on Takeru’s door, facing away from me. His free hand twirled Takeru's sai; he must have wiped it on his pants because there was a red streak there. Takeru was sobbing in his room, and there was a big wet splotch smeared across the wall all the way to his door.

“No one is coming to help you,” the boy said softly. “Right now your disgusting sister is bleeding out. The Elites are either dead or our allies. Your mother is facing six Elites with only a fountain pen. Open the door, Watanabe. It’s all over.”

I crept toward him. The carpet swallowed my footsteps.

“I promise that I won’t let you suffer,” he said.

I crouched behind him.

“I promise that I will make it fast,” he said.

I jumped.

**

When I had stretched him out against the wall, I heard the door click. Takeru peered out, eyes red. He was hugging a bath towel and a sai to his chest, t-shirt dark and glistening with blood.

“Saya?” he said.

“Are you coming?” I asked.

“I wa-was… I was…” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I was stabbed.”

“Me too.” I stood up. “Let’s go before we realize how bad it is. Do you have any money?”

His eyes widened. “But we can’t escape. We need to go to a doctor.”

“Not without money,” I said. “You’re the one who has all the freedom. Come on. There may be Elites in the foyer and they may not be our friends.”

He groaned. “Where is Fujita-san?”

My face burned. “I don’t know. Come on.”

Shaking, he pulled out a wallet and threw it to me. Inside was a Black Card, a wad of bills, and the keycard for running the elevator. I stuck it in my pocket, stepped into my room, grabbed my katana, _wakizashi_ , and _tantou_ off of the nightstand, and belted them over my hips. Then I jerked my chin toward Mom's room. Takeru's brow wrinkled, but he followed me in anyway.

"Close the door quietly," I said.

"Why are we in here?" Takeru asked. "We can't hide here. They'll find us."

“We’re not hiding.” I knelt by her bed and pulled out the drawer, then entered in the code.

"Then what are you doing?" he asked.

"Saving your life," I said, opening the clamshell box. "It's what Mom uses to heal herself. Sit here."

As Takeru slowly lowered himself onto the bed, I loaded a glowing yellow vial into a syringe. It popped in with a click. A few thick yellow bubbles drifted toward the plunger. He shrank away when he saw the needle.

"Are... are you sure?" he said.

"Yeah, I'm sure," I said. "Don't make any loud sounds."

"Can’t I just go to an ambulance?" he asked in a tiny voice.

"No. Bite the comforter or something. I'm gonna give you at least one of these or bust."

Somehow he managed to only make a strangled groaning sound when I injected the first one into his arm, but it was low enough. I was able to stick him three more times before he waved me away.

"Okay! Okay!" he said. "What is that supposed to do anyway?"

"Help you heal." I closed up the box, throwing the syringe inside. "You carry the box. If I get badly hurt, you've got to use the rest on me."

“Why not now?”

“Do I look badly hurt to you?”

He paused. “Yes.”

“Well, I feel okay.”

“You just don’t want to get a shot.”

“Shut up.”

"You look horrible, though. I'm not joking."

"Fine," I said.

I loaded the vial up and plunged the needle into my thigh. It hurt like hell. Watching the plunger drop made me dizzy; I had to look away. Naturally, I met Takeru’s eyes. Mortally wounded, and he still had a shit-eating grin on his face. I glared at him without blinking the entire time.

"There," I said, closing up the box.

"Just one?" Takeru said.

"It's supposed to work better on m... on mutants. I'll be fine."

“Sure,” he said.

We crept down the stairs together, he looking right, me looking left. We headed through the living room toward the elevator lobby on silent feet. Part of me was dreadfully curious to see what the yellow liquid would do, if our skin and muscle would seal up before our eyes or if the blood would stop flowing. But I didn't feel any different. As for Takeru, he still shook and his breaths were rapid ones, and I couldn't tell the shape of his stab wound just by looking at him.

Just before we reached the _genkan,_ I grabbed Takeru’s arm. In the glossy marble floor, I could just see the reflection of an Elite's head. He was looking in our direction.

Waiting. Watching.

Takeru’s face was strained and colorless. He glanced down at me. I shook my head and pointed toward the kitchen. We crept there side by side. That was where we found Fujita-san. She lay crumpled against the refrigerator. There was a knife in her hand and it was streaked with blood. Tears burned in my eyes. I blinked them away and headed toward the staff entrance. The emergency stairs and the staff elevator were back in that part of the apartment. When I peeked out, I saw the Elite watching the elevator. Or at least, he was turned toward it. His head drooped upon his chest; his hand clutched at his side. His knees had buckled and he knelt in his blood.

 _Fujita-san,_ I thought.

We crept up to the elevator and hesitated before it. Takeru looked over his shoulder, then at me, and nodded. Then he pressed the button.

The button dinged.

In that silent apartment, we might as well have set off an alarm. Feet stamped toward the kitchen from the foyer. Then Takeru and I were inside of the elevator, and he had punched the button for the first floor. The footsteps grew closer and closer; beating over the stone, then beating over the carpet. We flattened against the walls. Sweat beaded on my forehead.

The kitchen door slammed open. A dark shape with flashing eyes stood in the doorway, katana raised. And then the elevator doors began to shut—the shape sprinted toward us—I drew Jacob's knife and threw it. Up went the arm to shield his face; the knife buried in his throat, and the doors slammed shut.

The elevator hummed as it descended. We were safe for the moment.

Takeru started to cry again.

“Is it true?” he said. “Is Mother dead?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. We need to get out of here and get you to a hospital.”

“What about you?” he asked.

“I’m a monster,” I said. “They wouldn’t know how to help me.”

“We’ll pay them so much they won’t talk,” he said.

I side-eyed him. “Okay, that’s great. In the meantime, there will probably be Elites on the floor level.”

He squeezed his eyes shut.

"What happened out there, anyway?" I asked. "How much do you know?"

"Those were members of my old squad. We go... we went to school together." He looked down at his feet. "I was kidnapped out of gym class. They got me into a car and used a stolen keycard down in the parking garage. I saw two Elites dead and two guarding in the foyer." He raised his head, eyes panicky. "I don't know anything else. How many of them are traitors? What are we going to do?"

“Calm down,” I said. “We got this far. Okay, so... let's think. You only saw two, so hopefully it's just a small group, right?"

"But what if it isn't?"

"There were only two Elites here," I said. "Best case scenario is that they’re the only ones. Worst case scenario: if there are more, that means they’re busy somewhere else. Which would mean there are some Elites and _genin_ who are still devoted to Mom out there and they’re fighting. So let’s get out on Floor 2 and go out the windows. I’ll bet they don’t have enough to watch all the floors, so they’re gonna be watching the stairs and the elevator on the first level, with a spotter to watch the street.”

He nodded. “Then what?”

“Ambulance, then hospital, I guess. What’s on floors one through three, anyway?”

“The gym’s floor three, restaurant on floor two, offices and the pool on floor one,” he said.

“Does the public use the restaurant?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Then that’s where we’re going. Got your phone? Call 911. Tell them there’s been a murder and that you need an ambulance.”

For the first time since the attack, color flushed his cheeks. He set down the clamshell case and withdrew his cell phone. As he made the call, I pressed the button for Floor 2. Then I reached into my pocket and withdrew my cell phone. I hesitated over the group chat. I thought of Mr. Sugar's advice, Takeru's speech in the exercise room, my mother. Then I typed.

"I'm in trouble," I typed. "I need help."

"What kind of trouble?" Dickens asked.

"Assassins," I wrote. “Japanese faction here. We’ve been stabbed.”

The chat filled with horrified expressions.

“How many? What rank?” asked Eiji.

“At least five Elites. No _genin_ yet.”

“Where are you?” Eiji asked.

“Tower.”

"Coming," Perez typed.

"I'm close," Eiji typed. "Everyone's here but Nakamura. We're armed."

"Coming," Nakamura said. "I'm nearby."

I waited for a second with my fingers hovering over Mom's name in my contacts. If she were really dead, then our enemies would have her phone.

I closed my contacts and slipped the phone into my pocket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Super sorry for just STOPPING there for a bit.
> 
> 1) Life got wild  
> 2) A weird plot point developed. I didn't want to post until I knew where it was going. (I kept writing, though. If you were watching you could see the chapter count creep upward. Fuck. I originally thought this thing was gonna be like 15 chapters hahaha do you remember that HAHAHAHA)  
> 3) Nihilism  
> 4) A progressive chain of existential crises  
> 5) Sleeping got wild too wow
> 
> Here's another list because I feel like talking about this chapter now  
> A) More breakfast (I love breakfast)  
> B) Have you ever been so done with your own angst. Like stop crying you fuckers, jesus, I'm gonna slap you with a newspaper  
> C) I thought I'd care about killing that character but it turns out I only have feelings for breakfast
> 
> I'm working on the last two chapters of Saya as we speak. Posting schedule will start again. Weekly or biweekly depends on how well the final chapters come out in the next few days.
> 
> Big thanks to all my buddies at TMNT-Zone (howdoyoudo, Alessandra, Caroaimezoe, Winnychan, Luleiya, booyakabungala). I totally abused your willingness to compliment me whenever I mentioned Saya. I'm sorry. But also not sorry. It gave me strength. Thanks lol I'm a compliment vampire
> 
> Thanks to Kyn for showing up out of the blue to inspire me with....... I'm not sure what it was and I was a little frightened but I was definitely inspired
> 
> And thanks to all of you commenters and quiet readers and kudo-granters. This is a special story to me. You can't possibly know how pleased I am that you are here.
> 
> I'm not thanking Zak, though. Fuck you Zak and your kissy-faces and the fact that you ninja-kicked me.


	18. Chapter 18

When the doors opened, Takeru and I stumbled out together. The staff elevator emptied into the restaurant's kitchen. We stood in a recess that had been walled in by cardboard boxes for napkins and paper towels.

“Where’s the Elite?” Takeru whispered.

“What Elite?”

“There is supposed to be an Elite here.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

We paused, breath held. It looked normal enough. Before us were stainless steel tables, a row of ranges, a haze of heat and steam, and sorted trays of uncooked food. Cooks in starched white shirts and aprons bustled and chopped with their heads down, chatting with each other, calling to waiters as they dashed in and out. We stood there completely ignored for a couple of seconds while I scanned the area for the missing Elite and a back door. Then a waiter thrust through the double doors, saw us, and skidded to a stop.

“Oh my god!” he said.

“Help us,” I said. “Call the police.”

“We’ve been stabbed,” Takeru said.

The cooks, dishwashers, and waiters turned to stare altogether. The next thing we knew, a battalion of kitchen staff had pulled up some cheap plastic seats, set us up in a windowless break area, broke open the First Aid kit, made calls on their phones. I kicked the clamshell case underneath my chair.

"Who did this to you?" a waitress asked. She leaned in toward me and cupped my cheek. She had perfect ringlets, a round face, and wore bangles. Something about the combination was motherly and soothing. Mr. Sugar's voice whispered warnings in my ear, but all I wanted to do was wrap myself up in her concern like a blanket, release the responsibility, close my eyes, sink away...

I recovered almost immediately.

“No, no, wait!” I said as a cook stuck a bottled water in my hand. “We’ve got to get out of here. There are bad men after us. Do you understand?”

“What do you mean?” asked the cook slowly.

“And what happened to the Elite?” Takeru asked. “Where’d he go?”

My waitress turned to look at Takeru. Her eyes flew wide.

“Oh my god!” she said, pushing Takeru’s hair back. “You’re Takeru Watanabe!”

“Yeah,” he said, gasping. He didn't look so hot now that he was sitting down. Very white, clammy skin. As though his body had been waiting for the rest and now it was crumpling.

I drew my katana and stood. “Yeah, and who are you?”

The room went silent. The workers backed away in a nervous pack, glancing at one another. The sweet motherly waitress jerked away like I had stung her. Her fear horrified me.

“Who doesn’t know him?” someone asked.

“Get away from us,” I said, “or I will gut you.”

Nobody laughed.

“Takeru,” I said, “get up. We’ve got to keep moving.”

Takeru tugged on my sleeve.

“Leave them alone,” he said in a tiny voice.

“There could be ninja in here,” I whispered. “I said to get up.”

“Wait. Who are _you?”_ my waitress asked.

Her look of confusion was genuine. Laughing weakly, I lowered my sword and hooked my arm around Takeru’s.

“Nobody,” I said.

I heaved Takeru to his feet. His skin was cool to the touch.

“Get the case. We have to keep going,” I said. “These people can’t help us.”

“But I’m tired,” he said.

“I know,” I said.

I dragged him after me, raising my sword as we passed through the knot of workers. I tried not to feel wicked. The only way I could manage this was by not looking anyone directly in the face. The tip of my katana quivered.

We stepped out of the kitchen into an entirely different world.

Carpets and booths were a rich red trimmed in jet; globular lanterns with flower motifs hung from golden cords over each table; the bar was cherry and gilding and glass. The walls were lined with arched windows, and a shamisen tinkled through the speakers. Men and women in business apparel leaned over tables, laughed politely into menus, sipped dark wine. Everything was polished and hushed and elegant.

My first thought was that Mom was going to kill us for getting murdered here.

I jerked Takeru toward the double doors at the front of the restaurant. Normally I would have trotted toward them without a second thought. Now all the furniture and architecture leaned too closely and I felt like Samwise Gamgee dragging Frodo toward the mouth of Mount Doom.

“Why are you going so fast?” Takeru slurred. “Let’s wait for the ambulance.”

“No.”

“Why not?” he asked.

A man looked up, saw us, turned white. A woman screamed. Someone jumped up out of their booth.

“Stay back,” I snapped, swinging my katana toward a grizzled executive in black.

“Is this an act?” someone whispered. “I didn’t know there would be an act.”

My heart pounded as I shifted Takeru back up on my shoulder. He was slipping down and I was too short to keep him comfortably balanced. My back hurt, my neck hurt, my arms hurt. I was starting to feel the pain from the stabbings—uncomfortable tightness across my scalp, a sharp ache above my right wrist. I had totally forgotten about the damage I had sustained to my arms. The stab wounds had neatly parted my flesh like gaping lips.

"What did you give me?" Takeru asked in my ear.

My stomach sank. I was starting to think terrible things.

"Mom uses it on herself," I said. "You know how your joints don't age well when you fight a lot?"

"Yeah?"

"It fixes that. And she told me I could use it if I were stabbed. Like, it would save your life if you used several of them. But I think you should still see a doctor. It sounds like it's supposed to be a gradual fix, not an instant one."

"I see," he said faintly. He rested his head on my shoulder. His cheek was cold and sticky with sweat.

"Don't give up," I snapped. "If you give up I'm going to follow you into hell and drag you back."

He started laughing a little, then winced because it clearly hurt.

"You don't even like me," he slurred.

"I don't hate you, Takeru," I said. "I mean... maybe if things were different we'd be closer. You ever think about that?"

"Hmmm."

I was babbling now. "I mean, I feel like I barely know you. Like I've barely gotten to know you. And there's something good here, you know? You can't just _die_ before I get to know you."

"Who says?" he murmured. "Everybody dies."

My arm tightened around him. The front doors loomed before us, windows as bright and inscrutable as the eye of god. These led out onto the summer street. I could hear the groan and grind of traffic, the chatter of passersby… the distant howl of an ambulance.

I had just begun to shift Takeru onto my back to grab the doorknob when a silhouette blotted out the light. An Elite draped in black stepped through the doors into the restaurant. He was tall and sinewy, broad in the shoulders and slim-waisted. He wore the armbands of the Japanese faction. There were sai clenched in his fists, the blades jutting out between his fingers. His knuckles were taped up and caked in gore.

I dropped Takeru at once. He collapsed to his knees beside me with fluttering eyes. I lifted my katana, licking my lips. The silence was so heavy. The whole restaurant had gone still. Even the music had gone quiet, lingering in that meditative space between songs.

At that moment, my phone buzzed in my pocket. Without looking, I fished it out and tossed it toward Takeru. It plopped into his lap.

“Answer it,” I said, and settled deeply into a back stance.

The Elite did not move at once and I couldn’t figure out what he was doing. Waiting for backup? Why? Takeru was useless and I was three times smaller, not to mention carrying a weapon that the sai had a natural advantage against. Waiting for me to make the first move? Nope. I wasn’t suicidal. Longing for my brilliant conversation, perhaps? In which case, both of us were fucked.

“What are you waiting for?” I asked at last.

“I don’t kill children,” he replied.

I shifted my grip on my katana. “I’m not a child.”

He didn’t laugh, but I could feel his grim amusement.

“Step aside,” he said. “I will take the boy. You may go, little one.”

Shock hit me. He didn’t know I was Takeru’s sister.

I don’t know why. Maybe I looked different with all of the blood. Maybe the Japanese faction was unaware that I was real. Maybe my grandfather had kept family topics on a need-to-know basis; he certainly hadn't been proud of me. I glanced at Takeru out of the corner of my eye. He was crumpled beside the clamshell case. His hand shook as he tapped something out on my phone. He wasn’t even paying attention to me.

I lowered my stance and sidled between my brother and the Elite. Breathe. Remember to breathe.

“Little one, step back, for your sake,” said the Elite in a gentle tone. “I will win this fight. You know that.”

“I won the last three,” I said. Last one had been won on a technicality, but whatever.

He chuckled softly.

“Your bravery is commendable,” he said. “But I will ask you only one more time. Step away from the boy. This fight does not concern you.”

Takeru lifted his head. His face was so white that his eyes looked like the periods on a page.

“Who’s Don?” he asked.

My shoulders stiffened. “What?”

“Unknown number, signed Don.”

Of course I didn't have time to ask what the message said, because this was exactly when the Elite moved.

His expression was apologetic. I think he could have been dreadfully fast, had he wanted to. But, like everyone who ever saw me, he also underestimated me. His speed was moderate, lazy. His technique controlled, confident. He was the epitome of years of training and experience. He flipped his sai around to use the hilts like clubs. A pity. Properly utilized, he could have hooked my blade between the tines and snapped it in two. I guessed he had summed me up as some housekeeper’s child, a dutiful but inexperienced student, overweight from too many sweets.

I overcompensated. Can you blame me? I dashed beneath his lazy swipe—a blow he had intended to knock me aside—and slashed through his knee. His fists whiffed uselessly over my head. Grim delight rushed through me as the leg buckled. He turned, precariously balanced on his one good knee and flipping his sai around a fraction too late. I continued my momentum and slashed his left arm off at the elbow. Blood squirted across the floor, across me. His face went white; his eyes closed momentarily. As he went down, I pivoted behind him, raised my katana, and took off his head. The sharpened steel bit through without hitching. Dark streams gushed across the carpet. The whole encounter took the space of a second.

The restaurant was full of screaming now. I lifted my face to Takeru’s. He was gaping at me like a fish. I felt like I was shining.

But of course, Elites always go in pairs.

The front door kicked open. I was still too fascinated with my unlikely victory. I had only made a quarter turn when the staff cracked into my back with brutal force. Pain burst at the epicenter and every nerve in my body fired off like it was the Fourth of July. I lurched over my kill’s squirming corpse. From instinct and habit, I ducked and rolled, but there wasn’t much room to maneuver in that dining room. I rammed into the legs of a table head-first. My nerveless hands released the katana and for a second all I could see was a white flash and the swimming darkness behind my eyelids.

One rough hand grabbed me by the leg and jerked me up into the air. My knee twisted with a bright panging pop. I didn’t even get to see the Elite who was grabbing me. With a violent spin, they hurled me through the plate glass window.

I have been taught to fall. There are ways to minimize the damage you take from various heights and positions. But as I crashed through the window, driving shell-first through the tenuous barrier between light and dark, all I could think was, _This is going to hurt so much._

The sudden transition from the dark, cool restaurant to the crushing light and humidity of July was almost as much of an agony as the glass. Disoriented, I couldn’t correct my spin. I crashed into a flight of stairs and rolled down them, limbs dead, sheaths jamming into my thighs. Every impact of my shell on the stone was like a lightning strike that lanced through my spine to the tips of every digit over and over again. My knee cracked. I think I screamed, but I was so out of my mind that maybe I imagined it.

I rolled to a stop on the sidewalk. For a second all I did was gasp for breath. My perception was a confused riot of color and smell and heat. I slowly pushed myself up on my shaking arms. Glass tinkled on the cement around me, catching the light. Oh, my god, the blood. The blood. I was streaming with blood. When I lifted my hands, they popped up with a wet sucking sound.

Then the realization hit me. Takeru was still inside the restaurant. Takeru was still inside the restaurant with the Elite and I…

The Elite slammed the door open. It was a woman, face bloodless and contorted with fury.  I understood right away what I had done.

I staggered to my feet, testing my balance, testing my body. My right leg was fucked. It buckled if I put too much stress on my knee. The pavement burned through my sock; one of my shoes had flown off, and I had no idea where it was. I swept the back of my hand across my eyes, which were stinging from blood and sweat. I was vaguely aware of strangers screaming, and there was someone asking tremulously if I was okay. Nearby, a bunched group of passersby lifted their phones to eye-level. But nothing existed except me and the earth and the weight of my body…

The Elite sprinted down the stairs toward me.

There's something you should know about fighting: it's over fast. That means there is often no time for thinking, just trained response. In a moment I knew I could not face her. I could not whip out another weapon fast enough, nor maneuver well without the full use of my legs. So, as the great Sun Tzu would have suggested, I took the high ground. I launched myself off of my single good leg toward the Elite and smashed into her shins. She tripped over me and tumbled down the steps into a parked car, bashing her heel through the passenger-side window. I crashed into the stairs again and rolled onto my hands and knees. Pain spiked and ebbed in flashes, and I sagged half-senseless over my clenching fingers. Despite the agony, the world around me was crisp and clear and bright; I had been blessed with a heightened awareness.

The Elite hissed through her teeth, rolling over onto her feet. She favored her right foot. I wondered what her relationship had been to the Elite I had killed. Brother? Cousin? Lover? Friend?

As she rose, I ran through my options. None of them were good. I ripped my tantou out of its sheath and started to cry despite myself. This was where I was going to die. The whole scene stood out to me so clearly that I could paint it for myself years later. The cars stopping in the street to gawk, the pedestrians, the peculiar light of the sun…

…a bobbing black-haired head in the street. A gait I knew at once. A shout from a familiar throat. The breath caught behind my tongue. I almost didn’t want to hope.

Silent as death, Nakamura bounded over the hood of the car. The Elite didn't see her. I saw everything; I saw the nanosecond where Nakamura hesitated before taking a life. Then the _wakizashi_ flashed and bit. A red arc splashed through the air and across the ground. The startled Elite whirled around, pouring blood, more angry than incapacitated, and cracked the end of her bo up into Nakamura's ribs just as she dropped to the street. With a high-pitched yelp, Nakamura hit the tire well. Dickens was only a split second behind her, leaping onto the trunk of the car with _tonfaa_ cocked back under his elbows. My first impression of him was a flush of admiration. He looked sharp as hell, color-coordinated from his t-shirt to his skinny jeans to his shoes. He was too tailored to be real, like an actor in a movie.

But I didn’t look at him long. From somewhere to my right I heard Eiji shout, "Watch out!" Then there was a wet _thunk, thunk, thunk._ The Elite took two kunai in the cheek and the third in her throat, but with unflinching superhuman speed she continued spinning to smash her bo into Dickens' knees.

Dickens leaped off of the car’s trunk, almost folding in half, and her bo whooshed a mere millimeter below the dazzling white of his Jordans. Just as quickly, she whipped the bo back down to crack him across the back, but as though he had eyes in the back of his head, he arced his spine and hit the ground side-first. I heard his joints pop. Her bo cracked down on the cement, so close that it pinned down the brim of his ball-cap as he rolled away. Her blood was running down her arm, down the length of the bo, and when she flipped it up she flung bright red drops into the sky. It was pretty, I thought, in a terrible kind of way.

Nakamura had folded up against the car, face white, arms wrapped around her belly. But over the hood of the car came Perez, teeth gritted and gaze feral, and then Daichi and Eiji flanking her with weapons raised. The Elite did not hesitate once. She was after Dickens' blood. Her bo cracked over and over into his _tonfaa_ ; he was moving with that prodigious speed that had overwhelmed us so many times in practice. But it was no easy matter. He had sucked in his lips from sheer concentration and his face gleamed with perspiration. I knew that look. He could only win if he could outlast her.

Eiji whipped two more kunai into her lower back, a place where Elite armor rose when the arms were lifted. She took it as though she felt nothing. With terrifying one-minded tenacity, the Elite pursued Dickens between two cars, into the street. A car slammed on its brakes; Dickens jumped back. The driver leaned on their horn and for a split second Dickens glanced at them. It was distraction enough. The Elite swept his legs out from beneath him, and he fell.

I think she would have crushed his windpipe then and there if it hadn't been for Perez ramming into her with the sai, Daichi cracking her in the elbow with whirling _nunchaku_. She fell. When she hit the pavement, she jerked once as though her ghost had been forcibly ejected from her body, and then lay twitching on her face. The bo clattered beside her body with a staccato hiccup and lay still.

Perez and Eiji hesitated over her body. Their faces were drawn and pale.

"I'll do it," Perez said to Eiji.

So Eiji helped Dickens to his feet. Perez straddled the body and felt for a pulse, then stabbed up through the base of her skull to make certain the job was finished. She looked away when it was done. Without looking back, she pinned the enemy's bo beneath her arm and trotted toward us.

By that time I had risen to my feet and, using the banister for balance, limped halfway down the stairs. I felt and looked like shit, but I was grinning so big that my face hurt. My squad rushed up to my side, tennis shoes squeaking on the marble. Perez and Eiji heaved Nakamura to her feet. We met down on the sidewalk. Our heads knocked together as we bunched up. Enfolded in the warm safety of my squad, blinded by light and blood, I thought I knew what a pack of wolves felt like.

Someone started laughing—I think it was Perez. Soon all of us were laughing, although it was more of a nervous tic than anything else. Dickens grabbed me by the arm. I leaned into his side. He smelled like an excess of Axe body spray.

"Watanabe!" he said. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine!" I said. "I'm so happy you're here."

"You're talking like we were gonna let you die out here!" Perez said.

"Um," Nakamura said softly. "Guys. We're not alone, you know."

We lifted our heads. Traffic had dragged to a standstill. Down the street, motorists were beating on their horns. Passersby had taken refuge in stores and beneath awnings and in tittering groups. Phones everywhere glinted at eye level, stretched over heads, peeked between bodies. There was a scattering of nervous applause, like we had just put on a super violent _Cirque du Soleil._

"Well, shit," Perez said softly. She shrank down a little.

"We'll think about it later," I said. "Takeru is really hurt. We need to get him to a hospital now."

"Wait, Takeru’s here? Where?" Perez asked.

"In the restaurant."

"Okay, I'll go get him," said Daichi. "Eiji?"

"Coming."

"We should go together," I said. "No splitting up. The Japanese faction could be anywhere and... I don't know how many there are."

"We'll be fast," said Eiji. "Don't worry." He winked.

"Can you pick up my katana?" I asked. "It's... somewhere in there."

"Sure," Eiji said.

“And there’s a black plastic case with him!” I said. “Get the case, too!”

“Right, right!” Eiji said without looking at me at all.

With that, Eiji and Daichi rushed up the stairs three at a time. I watched them go with a throbbing heart.

"We shouldn't split up," I said.

"They'll be right back," said Perez. "It won't be long."

"We should get out of here," I said. "Like now."

"It won't be more than a minute," Perez said, patting me amiably on the back of the head.

"Ow," I said under my breath.

When the doors opened again, Eiji and Daichi were balancing Takeru between them. God, he looked awful. His arms flopped on their shoulders, his hands empty and limp and black with blood. It was at that moment that I felt I had forgotten something important, but for the life of me I couldn't think of what it was. Daichi had the case and Eiji had my sword. Surely it was one of those.

Wiping the worst of the gore off of our weapons with our t-shirts, we gathered our wounded and stumbled away across the street. Nakamura leaned on Perez, and Dickens had thrown my arm over his shoulder. My heart throbbed at his touch; his skin was as hot as fire. When we passed the dead Elite, none of us looked.

There was an ambulance idling in traffic, its wailing siren calling us in. The stalled cars were beginning to shift again and honked at us when we staggered in front of them. Dickens flipped them off.

“Oh my god, I totally forgot,” Perez hissed. “Weapons! Everybody who’s going to the hospital, hand ‘em over to me.”

“What?” I asked, clamping my hands down on my katana’s hilt.

“They’re illegal! The cops are totally going to take them from you.”

Perez jerked her chin. We all looked up. About a block away, two police cruisers flashed their lights. The driver of the foremost cop car was leaning all the way out of his window. At any point he or his partners could emerge, all armed with guns.

“Oh,” I said, and fumbled at my belt.

“Let me do it, Watanabe,” Dickens said. Two snaps and my belt hung in his hand. I couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Can you walk the rest of the way?” Perez asked Nakamura.

“Sure,” she said faintly, and offered up her own belt.

Perez threw the belts over her shoulder. Daichi surreptitiously took Takeru’s sai and flipped it to her as well. Perez nodded to us and rushed off through traffic. The policeman shouted at her indistinctly from his car, but she disappeared into the crush of curious pedestrians and was gone. There was nothing for us to do but slog on toward the ambulance. I could have cried when we drew up beside their bumper. EMTs threw the doors open as soon as they saw us, a man and a woman. They might have been young or they might have been old; it was difficult to tell. Their faces were haggard, their movements weary and deliberate, but their hair was lit up by the fluorescents on the ceiling, and in my elevated sight they were as glorious as angels.

“What happened here?” asked one of the EMTs as he lowered the gurney.

“My brother got stabbed,” I said. “Some… some guys from school.”

“Where’d that happen?” asked the woman.

“Up in the Tower,” I said, pointing back up toward the apartment.

"Is there an adult with you guys?" asked the woman. Her smile was fretful. A clipboard hung in her fingers, pen clipped up at the top.

"Adult?" I asked.

"We can't treat you without consent from your parents," she said.

"Or legal guardians," added her partner, who squatted beside her.

We all stared at him with our mouths hanging open. Cool air blasted into our faces from the bright white interior. The single gurney creaked to the floor and rested there, just within reach. I could have stretched out and touched it.

"But my brother's going to die!" I said.

"I'm sorry," said the female EMT. "It's the law."

"You mean you're just going to let him _die_ here?" Eiji asked.

"This is bullshit," Dickens snapped.

"If there isn't a guardian available," said the woman, "we will get the police to accompany you to the emergency room."

My entire squad recoiled. I felt like someone had sucked all of the breath out of us.

“Pardon me,” said a man from behind us. "I came as quickly as I could."

We all turned as a single unit. Behind us, standing between two idling vehicles like he had simply risen out of the ground, was a heavyset man in a hoodie, jeans, and work boots. A frayed strip of dark fabric had been wrapped around his face, perhaps the remnants of a t-shirt. His clothes were clearly harvested from thrift stores and dumpsters. In the summer heat he looked absurd. But that voice. I knew that voice. I knew it better than anyone else's on the entire Earth.

"Dad," I whispered. And then my voice rose, higher and higher. "Dad. Dad! Dad! Come sign their stupid paper!"

"You're the father of these children?" asked the EMT.

"Yes. They called me but I was only just able to get here." He turned his clear, cool eyes to mine. "I am so, so sorry I'm late, Saya."

There was something so heavy, so huge in that apology. I started crying big, stupid tears.

"Daddy," I said, and dropped Dickens’ arm. The squad had all leaned back, staring up at my father with huge eyes. Dickens’ hands opened and closed on the memories of his _tonfaa_. But I didn't care what they thought. I hopped one-legged toward my father with my arms outstretched. He rushed up to me, caught me up, and pressed his mouth against my ear.

"Saya, Saya, my baby, I missed you so much," he whispered. He kissed me on the forehead, on the nose. "Let's get you patched up, huh? Huh?"

He had never spoken to me like that before, not even when I was a baby. He’d always spoken to me like I was a little adult. I had memories of him telling me to “use reason” when I was about three. So to have him talk to me like this was almost unbearable. I didn’t even know it was a mannerism I’d wanted until he used it. I locked my arms around his neck, pressed my body as closely to his as I could, and bawled into his neck. Just cried and cried and cried. I didn't care who saw me and I didn't care where I was. All I was aware of was his heartbeat and his breath and his smell and all of those other things I had taken for granted so many months ago.

I was only half aware of where we were as he approached the EMTs.

"Where do I need to sign?" he asked.

"Here, please." The EMT's voice carried an unspoken question. I couldn't tell what it was, nor did I care.

"What's the patient's name?" the EMT asked.

"Ah... Takeru Watanabe," said my father. "He took his mother's name."

"I see."

The pen scratched on paper like a mouse at a wall.

"Are we going to take your daughter today as well?"

"I will drive her to the emergency room myself."

"Are you sure?"

Dad spoke so quickly that he ran over the end of the EMT's sentence.

"Yes," he said.

A rustle of fabric and a soft groan as one of the EMTs lifted Takeru out of the Yamaguchis’ arms. I was good as gone, almost completely senseless with the boundless, upswelling joy. No one existed but me and my father. All pain was secondary. It was going to be all right now. It was going to be okay.

"Is there anything else we should know?" the second EMT asked as they lowered him onto the gurney.

“Yes!" Daichi said. "Don’t forget Nakamura."

"What?" Nakamura asked distractedly. She was still doubled over in pain, arms wrapped around her belly.

"She's probably got broken ribs," Eiji said. "Or worse."

"Oh, yeah," she said faintly. "But I... my parents aren’t here."

"Back to the car, then," said Daichi. "We’ll get the driver. Come on, it's not far."

"I can help," Dad said. He shifted me over to the left and extended his arm. "Give her here."

Nakamura looked so small and twiggy beside him. She hesitated, sizing Dad up with unmasked fear.

"You're the _kappa_ ," she said in Japanese.

"That's right," Dad replied. “But I will not hurt you.”

Her eyes went to mine. I nodded, sniffling.

"It's okay," I said softly.

He leaned down, and she leaned into his arm with a pained expression. She sat in the crook of his elbow, and he lifted her up with a grunt.

"I'll take the rest of the children to the ER with me," Dad said to the EMTs. "We will meet you there. Which one are you going to?”

“Bellevue. Give your information to the front desk and they’ll direct you.”

“Thank you." Dad bowed. "I am more grateful than I can say.”

With that, Dad strode off through honking traffic, up to the sidewalk. My squad pattered behind him like a gaggle of geese.

“The police are coming for you,” he said in a calm voice. “I suggest that all of you scatter as soon as your friend is in the car.”

“Are you really a turtle?” Dickens blurted out. He raked Dad over and over with his eyes as though struggling to see through his clothing.

Dad didn’t meet his eyes. “Something like that.”

“Are you taking Saya away?” Nakamura asked.

Dad’s arm squeezed around me. I whimpered.

“Where is your car?” Dad asked.

There was a small explosion of explanations from the group. The boys eagerly rushed forward, pointing down the street. Nakamura raised her miserable eyes to mine. There was knowledge in them that I couldn’t refute. I had feared for the longest time that I would have trouble deciding between my parents, but the realization that I would no longer be subject to my mother’s overwhelming darkness… it was like someone had unlocked my shackles and thrown them aside. It was like the sun breaking through dreary winter weather. It was the purest kind of relief I had ever felt in my entire life. I should have felt guilty, but there wasn’t room in my heart for that.

Nakamura was dropped off in her car, a posh SUV with a uniformed driver. Perez was waiting beside it, our weapons stowed in the back. When she saw us approaching, her gaze flicked from my dad’s face to me over and over. I was pretty sure she had guessed his significance by the time he had dropped Nakamura off.

“Are you guys coming?” Nakamura asked in a small voice. I had never thought of her as a child before, but she struck me as one in that moment, all bent over and small with pain.

Dad hesitated. “Our kind can’t go to hospitals,” he said softly.

“What’s going to happen to her, then?” Eiji asked.

Dad looked down at me. I met his eyes without blinking.

“I want to go home,” I said in a quiet voice.

His eyes crinkled up in a sad, wet smile.

“Then that is where we shall go,” he said softly.

“What about her things?” asked Perez slowly.

“Give them to me,” said Dad, and extended his arm. He took the black case and looped my weapons over his shoulder. Then he bowed to the children in the car. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t look at them anymore. And with that, he strode off through the creeping cars to the sidewalk. We stepped between two buildings into shadow. The shielding darkness fell over us.

As Dad walked, I started feeling steadily worse. First I lost the sharp clarity and descended into a muddled fog. Then I started feeling the agonizing pulse in my hip and knee, both of which twinged with every bump and sudden stop. My back hurt in an indescribable way—a dull and throbbing ache that spread into my shoulders and hips and down into all my joints. My clothes clung to me like a second skin, and in the heat and sunlight soon hardened to the consistency of canvas. Soon I could feel every wound, every bruise, every point of glass. Sweat burned. It hurt to breathe and to close my eyes. Even the blood clotted up in my hair tugged it in painful directions. Everything hurt. I cried quietly and tried not to sniffle. Dad gently stroked my arm.

Dad stopped about three blocks away and leaned out, waving once. A white car squeaked to a stop beside us. It was the car that we had picked up in Texas, but with a new paint job. The only thing that hadn’t been changed were the black fabric seats. Donatello sat in the driver’s seat, cloaked in a dark winter coat. His smile did not extend to his eyes.

I saw my reflection in the shining white door. My makeshift bandanna was red with blood; my hair was clotted with blood; my clothes sagged with blood. My blood and Takeru's blood and an assassin's blood. Before me was my uncle, the smell of family, and a secure cab.

I relaxed. I closed my eyes.

I let go.


	19. Chapter 19

I don’t remember much of that car ride. A lot of stop-and-go traffic, mostly. The rocking motion of the car every time it stopped and the way it made my whole body ache. The throb of someone’s bass, a shout, a honk. The sun burning a yellow square on my legs. The comforting musk of my family, and Dad’s hands stinking of lotion and katana oil.

When I opened my eyes, I could only see the curve of Dad’s arm. It was an image of Don that I committed to memory: a gap-toothed grin as he leaned back in his seat, one arm relaxed on the window while he steered with the other. He didn't look at me, but I felt like he was keenly aware of me, like I was a variable in an equation that he had to track. I was a little afraid of him in that moment. There was something dangerously impersonal about him.

I also had an odd sensation, an unpleasant one, that there was someone in the backseat. It felt like the rat in the yukata. I didn't look.

Neither Dad nor Donatello said much. I think at one point Donatello said I should be laid on the back seat, but I clenched my fingers into Dad’s neck and buried my face into his shoulder. They didn’t push me. I felt hot tears on the back of my head. It hurt like hell, but I didn’t complain. Dad’s chin pressed into my forehead and his throat cupped my cheek. He was murmuring something meaningless, sometimes to me, sometimes to himself. At some point he lifted a water bottle to my lips.

I tried to keep alert, but it was impossible. I could no longer process the world around me. It melted into a meaningless haze of colors and light and sound, all stabbed through with the unending pain. The only way I can describe it is as a passive buzzing agony that ran through every cell. I couldn’t quite pinpoint where the pain started and ended; the ache was just always there. I could put it away sometimes, even forget it for a while. But then I would move incorrectly and it flashed up and I would just wish I could die. It wasn't even a matter of trusting in my family anymore; I had transformed into a creature of the present with no capacity for a past or a future. I could have faced a whole squad of Elites then and there and felt nothing but a world-weary inconvenience.

I don’t remember the part where we parked, but I remember the cool shadows, the tickle of dust, the stink of tomcats. Metal clanged. A door? The rattle of chains, a complaining hinge? I was too tired to open my eyes and look.

“Careful,” Don said, although I didn’t know what for.

An unbelievable stench swallowed us up in a cloud. I gagged into Dad's chest and he stuffed a balled-up rag up against my nostrils. Now I smelled the tang of my own blood. My stomach clenched.

"Breathe through your mouth," he whispered.

This didn't help very much. The stink was so thick that I could taste it.

I recalled a wall of slimy bricks lit up in amber by a flashlight and stalactites of slime. I knocked against a wall with my bad leg and cried out, and Dad whispered worriedly to me as his thumb stroked circles on my cheek. More darkness, the stench ebbing as we walked. Doors opening, doors shutting. So many doors.

Then there was the dim yellow light. Pressure on my ears, like I had gone underwater. There was an alien presence at our left. I felt a rough finger on my cheek, a voice so low and deep that I only heard it in my mind.

“Lay her down here,” said Don, his voice indistinct.

Dad’s grip tightened around me.

“I said to lay her down, Leo. Face down.”

He grudgingly lowered me. A bright white lamp flicked on and the weird, unearthly pressure vanished. With its banishment came lucidity and a little burst of energy. I shifted uncomfortably beneath it and pressed my face into a cold metal table that stank of bleach. I was lying on plastic and what I guessed was a cotton towel.

"Can you hear me, Saya?" Don asked.

"Yeah," I said into the table. My voice sounded small, even to me.

"Let me tell you what I'm about to do," Don said in a pleasant voice. There was a familiar squeaky rustle as he donned gloves. "We're going to wash you down. That means we're going to take your clothes off. Okay?"

"Okay."

"You're going to need stitches around your scalp," he said. "And depending on the damage, I might have to shave some hair off."

“No,” I grumbled.

Dad’s laughter came out like a bark.

“I’m not giving you choices, kid,” Don said.

“But I don’t wanna.”

He tsked. “Thems the breaks,” he said.

“Can we use the shots?” I asked.

“The what?” Don asked.

“The black case. The shots. It’s Mom’s miracle serum.”

“Oh?” Don asked softly.

“She said it would help me heal. I’ve already had one.”

Don laughed. “Well. Let’s take care of preliminaries before using the magic potions. Ready or not, this shirt is coming off.”

The neck of my shirt lifted and Don slipped a pair of heavy shears up against my neck. The metal was so cold that it hurt. When Don snipped and lifted the shirt away, the fabric stuck to my arms, but most especially to my back. I cringed when it tugged at my shell. Something was loose. Something felt _wrong_. I heard Dad’s sharp intake of breath.

“We’re gonna remove the clothes carefully, okay?" Don said in a chipper voice. "Shell looks broken and I don’t want to miss any pieces.”

"Broken?" I asked. My voice was thick and slurred.

"Yep," Don said. "It looks like the inclusion on a star sapphire."

I didn't know what he was talking about, but I thought of Raphael and laughed a little. It hurt.

"All I can say is that it's a good thing you kept your shell." Don patted the back of my neck. "Keep still. We're going to fix you."

"Don't worry. Don has done this countless times," Dad said gently. I couldn't tell whether he was saying it for my sake or for his own.

My jeans came off next, gently tugged off and thrown on the floor. Dad’s hands settled on my injured knee first. I yelped and rose halfway from the table. Don pushed me back down.

“Don’t!” I said.

“Stop it, Saya,” Don said. “Leo. Stop making faces and get the bucket.” A pause. "The bucket, Leo!"

Then came the warm water. Dad gently laved me from the waist down with a sponge. Don washed down my scalp and shoulders. My knee pulsed with a second heartbeat, shot through with arrhythmic twinges, like my nerves had started a jazz band down in my tendons. Every time Dad had to touch it, I yelped.

“How much blood can one little girl have?” Don asked.

“Donatello,” Dad said.

“I’m asking an honest question,” Don said.

"It's not all mine," I said into the towel.

Dad and Don started laughing in earnest.

"That's my girl," Dad said, patting my thigh.

I passed in and out of consciousness. They flushed out my wounds and applied salves. Don washed down my scalp and shaved off the last of my hair. I squeezed my eyes shut so I didn’t have to look at it go. Then they plucked out all of the glass they could find. There was an inordinate amount in my shoulders. Don and Dad went over me with a fine tooth comb, cleaning me down, pointing out wounds deep enough for sutures. Then they brought out the needles. The actual stitches didn’t bother me as much as I thought they would. They just took forever, and I cried quietly when the pain was too much.

"You're so strong," said Dad kindly as they worked. "It's okay to cry. Don't worry. You're going to be just fine."

Don snorted and flicked a bit of glass down into a bowl beside him.

Then Don began to flush the crack in my shell out with something warm that stung. I curled my fingers into my palms and this time a whine slipped out of my throat. I hated making the sound, but there was no way to stop it. Feeling anything on that part of me set me on edge, an ice-cream-headache kind of edge. It was a raw, deep, _wrong_ pain, because nerves were firing off that never should have been touched.

Dad's voice rose. There was an edge to it.

“We’re making sure no bad germs are in here,” Dad said as pink-tinged liquid dribbled off of the lips of my shell and pooled on the floor. “We’re going to seal this up now. Nothing is broken underneath and that’s the important part.”

_How do you know?_ I wanted to ask. But it was taking everything I had just to hold back tears.

So it was that my wounds were cleaned, the shards of my shell fit back together like the pieces of a puzzle, and epoxy poured into the cracks. Don fitted a rudimentary cast fashioned of duct tape and fiberglass across my back. Dad’s soft, working dialogue formed a droning backdrop. At some point, the exhaustion and pain overwhelmed me, and against my will, my eyelids sank shut. I was aware of sounds and light shifting away, like I was circling a drain, sinking down into darkness, until the only thing I could hear was the rustle of Don's coat, and then nothing at all.

**

I was walking between the trees in Northampton. Bright curtains of light streamed through the canopy, warm and liquid. Everything was quiet, but I didn’t feel frightened. It was the kind of quiet you feel on a snowy day, the kind of quiet you feel underneath a blanket. I was wandering down a deer path between the trees, dragging my fingers against the trunks. I felt so peaceful. Everything was so right.

I don’t know how long I wandered. It was always easy going, just a slow and thoughtless ramble. I was never afraid of becoming lost or falling or being hungry or thirsty. Even the plants were harmless. Brambles did not scrape me and I never stumbled. A butterfly bobbed by and I felt the breeze of its wings on my arm.

The realization came to me slowly: I had made it. Nobody could take it away from me. I was back in Northampton forever.

The farm was mine.

**

When I woke up, I felt like I was drifting up out of a cloud with the warmth and weight of an embrace. At first I was disoriented. I was not hiking through a sylvan wonderland, but lying on my chest. My eyes and body were unpleasantly heavy. I clenched my fingers into fists, and my fingernails scraped over the rough cotton of an old bedsheet. Beneath me was a futon, and a blanket had been drawn up around my neck.

The outside world crept in despite my best efforts. The sounds were faint—the rhythmic drip of water, the distant rumble of traffic, and a motor humming somewhere. The air was musty and cool, like a cave; the air was close, thick, sluggish, and stank of dust and disuse. Far, far away was the spoor of rats.

Someone was breathing softly beside me.

I cracked my eyes open reluctantly. The room I lay in was dark with vaulted ceilings. Something about it was more like a jail cell or a storage room than a bedroom; there were no windows, only cracked plaster walls and a scarred cement floor. The room had been cleaned and smelled of bleach, but all it contained was a fan, my futon, a yellow LED lamp, and a beat-up cooler. Sitting beside me on a broken recliner was Dad, his face crushed into the palm of his hand and a rough cotton blanket thrown over his knees. I could see scuffs on the floor where he had dragged the chair from another room.

I shifted, testing my joints. My knee was in a brace and I felt hot all over. I slowly rolled over, groaning. That's when I realized I couldn't feel any pain.

Astonished, I sat up slowly. My arms pushed me up without complaint; they were only a little stiff. Not the kind of painful stiffness from a hard workout, either, but the mild stiffness from being in one position too long. I rolled to a seated position and slowly stretched out my legs. A few careful stretches, and I'd shaken out the catches in my knees. Then I tapped the heels of my feet on the floor. It was cool, comfortable, a little granular in places. I glanced across my skin; there were pink puckers where they had dug out the glass and pale scallops across my right forearm where I had been stabbed. I reached around my waist and groped at my shell. I could just barely feel the smooth surface of the resin filling.

I stood, joints popping. An oversized nightgown grazed the tops of my feet. Although I felt light-headed and light-bodied, I also felt no pain. Most importantly, my right leg did not collapse beneath me.

My eyes flew to my dad. He still breathed softly in his chair. There were bags under his eyes and his forehead was crinkled up. He appeared heavier and healthier than I had seen him last—thicker-armed, plumper cheeks. His skin was no longer pale and patchy, but a sun-burnished green. His mouth was slightly open and a string of drool hung from the edge of his palm.

"Dad?" I whispered.

His eyes moved beneath his lids and his breath hitched for a moment. Then he began evenly breathing again.

My gaze fell to his side. My blades leaned against his chair. His own weapons lay across his lap, a little white cell phone resting on the sheaths. A bright orange cleaning cloth lay crumpled on its screen.

I didn’t know how I felt, looking at him. I didn’t feel the violent upwelling of love I had felt in the street. Instead, I felt exhausted. I needed to leave the room. I needed a dark space to curl up and gather my wits and think, somewhere far from Dad and Mom and anything that reminded me of them. At the same time, I was afraid of being alone.

For a while I stood there looking at him, and I didn’t think at all. I just was.

I shook myself out of my stupor. First things first. I needed to know what time it was, and I needed to know how Takeru and my squad were doing.

I reached for my pocket and my hand clutched on the nightgown. I whirled around to look at the futon. The memory hit me suddenly. I didn't have my phone. Takeru had it. Panic wheeled through me.

Takeru.

Just as quickly as it had arrived, the panic sank away. Stillness replaced it, and suddenly I felt very sad.

I limped to Dad's side and gently extracted the phone from his lap. If he hadn’t been so tired, this would have probably woken him up. All he did was shift a little and hold his breath.

I swiped. As I expected, password protected, and if I knew my father, it would be 18 characters long and completely randomized. What I hadn’t expected was that the picture behind the locked screen was one of me at Northampton. I was squatting at the edge of the pond with a stick, drawing in the mud, wearing that oversized t-shirt and an enormous pair of black gym shorts. I didn’t remember the picture being taken. I thought I looked so much smaller in that image, little stick arms and little stick legs. I looked down at my arms. They curved with muscle. I had biceps and hips. Even my color had changed. I was brown as a nut in the photo. Now I was a creamy color from being kept inside the apartment all day. My paleness hid my scars, although my freckles stood out starkly.

The home screen said it was three in the morning, and the date told me that I had been out for at least a day and a half. There were a few notifications on the front screen. Thirty-three missed calls, it said. I blinked. The missed calls were from a name written in kanji.

I leaned in and squinted. It couldn't be.

And then, to my shock, the phone started to vibrate. Incoming call. The kanji popped up in its full-sized glory beneath a number with the Japanese country code.

My mouth fell open.

“Watanabe,” it said. That was all. No first name.

I was reminded of when Dad told me that the whole family spoke Japanese as young children, but how they’d dropped it one by one as they’d aged. Most of them had found American culture more appealing and immediate than the dusty memories of their father. It was only Dad who had continued his studies in it, speaking routinely to his father in the tongue and learning the alphabets and kanji. I wondered if this name being in kanji was just a way for him to hide something. I glanced at him with narrowed eyes and accepted the call, then raised it to my ear.

Her voice came to me, angry and brusque. But this time I knew what she was saying.

“Where is she?” she snapped. “What have you done? I swear to you, Leonardo, if you run with her again...”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Saya!”

Her voice broke. The sound of pain was microscopic, but I heard it.

“Where are you? Are you well?” she asked. Then her voice sank a fraction. Confusion. Fear. _Treachery._ “You left your squad.”

The statement cut me. I winced.

“I can’t go to a human hospital.”

“You should have gone to the Bunker.”

“I was scared of Dr. Hernandez,” I said. “And I thought Takeru….” I paused. “How is Takeru? Is he okay?”

“Yes,” she said. “He is alive and his healing has terrified the doctors. You did well." There was a note of pride in her voice. "Where are you?”

“I don’t know. I think I’m underground.”

"Where is your father?" Her voice was frigid. "Satou-san is looking for you. Do you know how to find us?"

Don cleared his throat.

I jerked my head up. He was standing in the doorway, mug of coffee in hand. His eyes were fastened on me in a way I could only describe as an intent predator who has seen movement and is trying to ascertain its purpose. I didn’t know how long he had been standing there. I didn't know how much Japanese he understood.

“I can’t talk anymore,” I said.

“Why not?” Her voice sharpened. “Is he there?”

“Put the phone down, Saya,” Don said softly. “Or I will make you put it down.”

I slowly lowered it from my ear, swallowing. I could hear Mom snarling on the other end very faintly. Donatello strode over to me, jerked it out of my deadened hand, and lifted it.

“Greetings. Turtle with brains speaking,” he said. His eyes never left mine. “As you can tell, Saya is just fine. Just fabulous. I had to take out the stitches in a matter of hours rather than days. Your healing serum truly is a miracle to behold.”

Mother’s silence was horrible.

“I will never stop searching for her,” she said at last. "And when I find y..."

“I’m sorry, this conversation is over,” said Don, and hung up. The phone started ringing again immediately, but he silenced it and slipped it into his pocket.

Don knelt down before me. His unblinking gaze didn’t leave mine. At first I met his eyes, but they were too penetrating. It physically hurt to meet them. My gaze shifted away to the floor. 

“I’m gonna go back to bed,” I said in a meek voice.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I think you’re going to tell me whose side you’re on.”

He was speaking in fluent Japanese. Not even the smallest hint of an American accent. I swallowed.

“What? Now?” I asked.

“Yes, now.” He grabbed me by the arm and switched back to English. “Let’s get some food.”

“But I’m not hungry,” I said.

My stomach chose to grumble at that very moment, and his lips turned up in a crooked smile.

We crossed into a wide corridor with pitted brick walls. More rough cement floors, more LED lamps, a few gaping doorways. Not a lot of time to enjoy the view; Don jerked me across the hall. The room we stepped into was identical to the one I’d left in size and construction, although this one was furnished. There were two sleeping bags in it, a microwave, a coffee machine, and a miniature fridge. Two beat-up beanbag chairs sat across from each other, patched with duct tape, and a beat-up card table with a bent leg leaned between them.

“Sit down,” he said, thrusting me down into one of the chairs. “Hope you like microwave dinners.”

“What did I do?” I asked. My voice came out in a squeak and all the color had left my face. “Why are you so angry?”

“Hmm, I don't know. Why were you talking to your mother?” asked Don. He set his mug on top of the fridge, jerked out a TV dinner, and threw it into the microwave without looking at it. He set it for six minutes.

“Because she called! The phone rang! I mean…”

 “Leo put that phone on silent.”

“Why does he even have my mother’s phone number anyway?” I snapped.

“He had a phone he’d ripped off of a Foot goon down in Texas. It was useful for our purposes.” Don slumped into the beanbag across from me. “So, how was time with Mom?”

His voice dripped with sarcasm.

“But Don,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. “I didn’t do anything!”

When he spoke again, he pitched his voice up high until he sounded like a Muppet.

“’I don’t know, but I think we’re underground,’” he said. He said it in Japanese and even emulated my accent.

My jaw dropped.

Don’s voice returned to English and his normal timbre.

“Why would you give us away?” he asked. “You know she’d kill us, right?”

I stuffed the heels of my hands into my eyes. “Leave me alone.”

He was silent for a minute while my face and eyes burned. I think I would have left but for the smell of the TV dinner. Something with cheap cheese and meat. The scent made my throat and stomach convulse.

"Let me make something perfectly clear," Donatello said. "We have sacrificed a great deal to pick you up. If you don't _want_ to be picked up, I will take you to the surface myself. No subterfuge, no giving up our secrets and hidey-holes, no sneaking around. I'll break the news to Leo. He'll understand."

I really started crying then. Just sobbing into my hands, big hot painful tears.

"No!" I said. "Stop it! I didn't do anything!"

"Then what do you want?" Don asked. "Be clear. Tell me exactly what you want."

"I don't know!" I said. "Why are you being so mean?"

He went silent. I didn't care. I pressed my nightgown to my eyes while the microwave hummed.

"You know, Saya," he said at last, midway through one of my hiccups, "this family is all I have. Most of them may be fools, but they're my fools. I can trust them. I know how they tick, as they know how I tick. Once they're gone, they're gone. I have no one. I have nobody. Do you understand what I mean?"

"You mean you don't like me?" I whispered. "But I thought... I thought..."

"Oh, I like you fine," he said. "But, see, I could gamble with your loyalty and lose everyone who means anything to me. So let's make it easy for everyone, including you. Tell me the truth."

"But I _am_ telling you the truth!" I said. "I want to go to Northampton and I want to be with Dad and I don't know what I did wrong!"

"Okay, maybe I'm not being clear. Let me put it like this." He tented his hands and closed his eyes. “For over ten years, I thought I didn’t need anybody. Leo was dead to me. I avoided Mike, and Raph went… wherever Raph goes. The only people I saw regularly were April and her family, and even then, I could go days without speaking to them. I thought I was happy. Maybe I was for a while. But these past months?” His eyes flashed open. There was fire in them. “I feel like I’ve come alive again. I’m making plans. I’m solving problems. I have direction. My brothers don’t have to ask me what I need or want. They know without my ever saying a word. I like being understood. I realized something. I realized I wanted them to be nearby and that through this very project I could lose them forever. Do you understand me now?”

I nodded hesitantly. “Y-yeah.”

“Good. Then let’s talk about you.” He laced his fingers together. "I have had the Foot under complete surveillance for a little under a year. I can decipher their codes, I have followed their webs around the world, and yes, I have watched you come and go from Watanabe Tower. I've even been able to see your training, access dossiers about your healthcare and creation, and intercept emails and texts about your tutoring and care. You've been living like a princess in that tower. You've got a grudging respect from authorities you've never seen in your life. You're being groomed to take over the organization from your mother and, by god, I think you could do it."

I nearly choked on my own spit. "What?" I said. And then I really did start coughing.

He opened the refrigerator and handed me a bottled water. The microwave beeped and he turned off the alarm, but didn't pull out the meal. Instead, he turned his laser focus on me. I averted my eyes as I knocked the water back.

"Let's face it," Don said. "If you were raised like your big brother, you'd be a spoiled brat—fat and soft and useless. But Leo hardened you. It's thanks to him you are what you are. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, it's thanks to him that you and your brother are alive right now. With brattiness… or, better put, entitlement… comes a certain, ah... blindness, shall we say? A blindness as to how other people _work_ and _want_. A warped understanding of reality and human nature and Mother Earth, red of tooth and claw. You don't really have that entitlement. You know there's something worse than not getting a toy you want. You know how far loss can go. You know that everything dies." He grabbed a bottled water for himself. "Sorry. I’m babbling now. What I want to _imply_ is that your use for Leo is done. What is your future with us, Saya?"

"My _use?_ For Dad?" I sat up straight, cheeks blazing. "You're talking like Dad is a... a mop or something!"

Don shrugged. "Sometimes people stop being good for us. Sometimes they start holding us back." He looked up at me, eyes cold and dark. "I think you should go back to your mother."

My stomach fell out. My mouth parted a little.

"This assassination attempt is one of the best things to happen to us," he said. "We've saved you and your brother. It’s on paper and it’s on video. It’s irrefutable proof we’re not enemies of Karai’s Foot Clan. If we return you, everyone will get what they want. All of this will have been done for something. We can start angling for a little peace treaty. Otherwise, it's back to running for all of us. Your schooling will end. Your attachment to the Foot will rot. You will grow too old for them to mold or understand and you will lose your allies. With those losses, you lose your chance to control them. And if you control them…" He grinned and winked at me. “You can go anywhere you want. Northampton included.”

“But that would be years from now!” I said. "I want Northampton _now_. I want to go back _now_."

"One problem. Karai knows where the farm in Northampton is," he said. "We consider it a complete loss. We’ve moved back to the city for the foreseeable future. Casey, April, and Shadow are already long gone, and have been for some time."

I felt like the whole world was reeling around me. I closed my eyes. That meant that the stream was lost, and all the trees, and the creaking old house, and Shadow’s messy room with the big-screen TV... and worst of all, Mike and Dad and Shadow and April. Everything, everyone... all gone for months and months while I dreamed fruitless dreams. It had all been lost the minute I stepped into Hunter’s car. It might as well have been torched off of the face of the Earth for all the good it could do me.

I had used Northampton as my touchstone for so long that I had no idea what to do without it. I had no idea what I could want otherwise. Despair rolled over me. My foundation crumbled away. I felt like a lone spark drifting in a void, unmoored.

"Again," Don said. "What is your future with us, Saya? We live our lives in hiding. We would have to do this even if Karai wasn't after our heads. But you? You can live like humans do. You can walk in the street in the sunlight and go to school. You can have friends and birthday parties and all the money you'd ever want or need. The Bunker is at your service; you can manipulate your body any way you like. Once you're old enough, you may even find love and companionship in a way we never can. The freedom you have is incalculable."

"But I'm alone up there," I said. "I think if I stayed there, I'd always have to _be_ alone."

Don blinked. "Oh?"

"Mom has no friends. I wouldn't get to have friends either. Or family." I looked at my hands. "Do I have to do whatever my parents say?"

He paused. "No, I guess not," he said. He sounded like I had caught him off guard.

That third pathway that I had seen briefly opened up before me again. There could absolutely be a future without either of my parents. That future probably didn’t include my uncles or Shadow, and it definitely didn’t include Northampton. It was frighteningly blank, a sheet of paper I could color any way I chose. That blankness was a lonely thing.

What would I do if I had no limitations?

I wanted to read, perhaps to have access to a library. I wanted an air conditioner and a bed and food and fresh, cold water. I wanted a little sketchbook and a pencil and a television and a computer and a phone. I had no interest in money except in having enough to meet my needs. And when it came to others, I had two conflicting desires. The first was that I wanted to be quiet and left alone. The second was the joy of a full house, full of muttered conversations and soft domestic duties and clinking dishes in the sink and the excited squawk of a distant television. When I thought of people, when I thought of Mom and Dad and my squad, I liked parts of them, but there were darknesses to them, inconvenient darknesses that brought out the darknesses in me.

I frowned. Was this really all I could think about? A boundless future, and all I could think of was mundane, puttering domesticity. It was like I didn’t have enough imagination to think of anything else. This bothered me most. Surely I should want more. Surely I could _be_ more.

"Don? I don't know what to do." I folded my fingers again. "I can't have Dad _and_ Mom. But I don't know what to do on my own."

He shrugged. "No brainer. Go with your mother. With us, it'll be a piecemeal life. With her, you can do anything you want."

"I can not either!" I snapped. "I can't have Christmas, I can't go to the farm, I can't walk around on the street without bodyguards... I… I…”

It hit me in a flash, unbearably heavy: the memory of Fujita-san’s body lying cold and still in the kitchen. I choked back a sob. Don’s eyes widened. To him it was a sudden shift in mood; for me it was the sudden realization that all the parameters had changed again. My speech continued, strangled and high-pitched.

“It’s just that there's always somebody spying on me, or somebody wanting to hurt me, or somebody wanting to use me. Nobody loves anyone in the Foot. But you all love each other. I thought you loved me!"

The way it came out of me—in a great flood, a great rush, a great lightness! My face heated up. I realized I had stumbled upon the truth, the great, bright, blazing truth in all its burning glory.

He didn't answer at once. I wish I had stopped there. He looked so thoughtful. Maybe he could have said something that would have unveiled more of that truth to me. But naturally, I kept stumbling on and into a half-light.

"You don't know what it's like,” I said, “being locked up in a little house and not ever getting to leave and..."

His eyebrows rose. His thoughtful silence evaporated. The veil dropped.

"Yes, I do,” he said. “The difference is that you can pass for human and will eventually get to leave that house. You have tutors, plenty of food, medical care, and, oh. Yes. Your house isn't located in a tunnel filled with raw sewage."

"I'm not happy up there!"

"Do you think _we're_ happy down _here?"_ asked Don. "Raphael has longed to be part of the world since before we could speak. It rejected him so often that he moved from embracing it to destroying it, begging for it to forgive him with every blow. Michelangelo can never have the family he wants, can't date, can't travel, can't even put his own goddamn name on his own art. Leonardo gave his whole life and identity to others until he didn't have either for himself. And I..." He sat back, flinging his arms out, eyes shining madly. "I could be the next Nikola Tesla but for this monstrous body. My brain is locked up in an inhuman shell. I am denied the best of human society despite being human in every way but form alone. I am relegated to scrap heaps and pirated texts when I should be mingling with the _crème de la crème_ of Silicon Valley."

“Is that it, then?” I asked. “I’m not allowed to be happy?”

“The Northampton farm is a happy place,” said Don, “but it is not the only place to be happy.”

“But you don't get it!" I said. "No one can be happy in the Foot!"

“The Foot is not guaranteed to be your prison,” he said. “You will still have choices. And I believe you will have more choices beneath its umbrella than we could ever offer you. Listen! It’s having _choices_ that is the important factor here. The choices we can offer you are very few. The choices your mother can provide are innumerable. I believe you should think of your stay in the Foot as a trial you must suffer for a short time.”

He leaned over his knees, hands knotted together and white-knuckled. His eyes were hooded by lowered brows. Suddenly I felt like I was looking into the truth again, except this time it was armed against me. I licked my lips.

“Look,” he said, “I know it’s hard for you to conceive of stretches of time, or that bad times can end. But they do end. They pass. Muscle through. Keep an idea of what happiness is inside of you and let its memory guide you.”

“But I want to go back to the farm,” I said in a little voice.

“You can’t,” he said.

“It’s not fair.”

“It never is.” He leaned closer to me. “But at least you know _what_ makes you happy, and you know it _now,_ before your adult life even begins. You will recognize it when you see it again. That way you know to enjoy the moment. Because it will be a moment, Saya. It will sneak up on you when you don’t expect it, then flicker away without warning. It’s like… Faerie, I suppose. You stumble into marvels without warning and you stumble out just as easily. You think that once you’ve stumbled out, it’s all over. But one day you will take a blind corner and its glories will open up in front of you once more, a different facet of the same happiness, and you will think, ‘That’s it. I’m not taking it for granted this time.’ But you always do. You can’t help it.”

To be honest, I didn't really understand what he was talking about, but I nodded like I did. It made me feel depressed and powerless, like I was a puppet on strings or a dog on a leash.

He leaned away, eyes closing, head cocked as though he were listening to a faraway sound. I realized that there was something like grief on his face, and he was finally sinking into thoughtfulness for his own sake. As for me, my mind was racing. I leaned back and considered the ceiling, blinking slowly. Feelings swirled and settled. I didn't want to be with the Foot. I knew that for certain, even with how much I loved my squad. It was too sterile, too unforgiving, too frightened and too frightening. The thought of leaving my mother filled me with a guilty relief.

This thought led me down an avenue I had never considered. What if Mom had kept me for those ten years? What would I have been without Dad? It was unimaginable at first. Would it have been any fairer for Mom to keep him from me? And she would have kept him from me.

I was startled to realize that I would have grown up thinking I was entirely human. I would have hated my shape; I would have probably had my shell and plastron and half-grown bridge removed and been happier for it. I would have asked for a human face. I would have gone to the Bunker with a smile, probably thinking it was some kind of special doctor's office. I wouldn't have recognized this alternate version of myself if I saw her in the street. She probably wouldn't have been pretty. The inhuman elements of her would have remained in subtle ways. She never would have been hungry or scared or too cold or too hot or too wet. She would have started killing at what, fourteen? Fifteen? Sixteen? Not as a little girl. Death and discomfort would both have alien meanings to her. They would have been exceptions to the rule, not the rule itself.

I thought of Takeru. I imagined growing up alongside him. I probably would have taken full advantage of my mother’s love for me; he would have hated me for the love he couldn’t have. Maybe, in this alternative reality, my presence would have spurred him on in his studies of ninjitsu; maybe he would have been my enemy. Maybe it would have been him leading Jacob and the other ninja boy into the apartment, knives up their sleeves, all three of them on me at once. Or I would have woken up in the night with his knife in my throat, his arm hooked around my chin. I died in this retelling, and shuddered at the thought of it. Or perhaps I would have come to a terrible realization about my inhuman parentage. Would I have sought my father out? A whole different story rolled up around me: a strange, lumpy, misshapen little girl running out into the streets to find out if what Takeru had said was true, if her father had really been a beast. In this story, she had been stripped of her shell like a prawn in a kitchen, pink and fleshy. My father would have looked upon me with a stranger’s eyes, a startled horror. The best parts of both of us would have been obscured by ignorance. The thought filled me with revulsion.

A new, helpless anger welled up in me. In all cases, nothing was fair. Nothing had ever been fair, had it? Nothing had ever been about me. It was all about fighting somebody else—being somebody else's weapon. I was never allowed to fully know one side or the other, not fairly, not well. In all cases truths had been hidden from me because truths would have allowed me to stand alone, leaning not on one parent or the other, but relying on myself and my own judgment. And neither of my parents could stand knowing that I wouldn't choose _them._

It was always about control and power. Never me.

How difficult to realize, too, that I could love the people who had damaged me, that their love could be possessive and cruel and wear masks. What would have been fair, anyway? How could they be fair when everything about their relationship was inequitable?

I was startled to realize that it wasn't as though I could have been any freer without them, either. Say I had been raised by some random family somewhere out in America. Grown up speaking with a twang or a brogue or Spanish or Cantonese. I would have still been locked to their lies in some way or another. Lies about themselves, so that they could live with their sins; lies about me, so that I wouldn't hate them for it. How could they _not_ shape me into their own images? How could I not be shaped by the culture of my city, my country, my language? In every case, I would have never been allowed to see myself for what I was. I wasn’t even sure if there was a _me_ outside of these overwhelming outside forces.

I closed my eyes and let the feelings rush in and out with every breath. I imagined the entire room as swirling with color, a kind of animated fantasy where I selected the colors I could breathe, and exhaled the colors I didn't want. I imagined myself breathing out the colors black and red, filling myself with bright dawn golds and pale greens and seaside blues. The truth was an overwhelming weight, even in this imaginary world. Almost as soon as I faced that turmoil, I shrank away. It was so vast and unknowable; archaeological in its depth, primordial in its darkness.

“Saya,” Don said. “Don’t you fall asleep on me.”

I opened my eyes. Don leaned over his knees, examining me. His expression had softened. There was the Northampton Don I had missed so much peering back out at me, curious and thoughtful and accessible.

“I don’t want to go back,” I said, tears gathering in my eyes. “I… I know Mom has more money and she’d take care of me, but… I don’t… I’m not happy there and I’m always scared and…”

“We will always be here in the city,” he said. “Leo had already decided to live as closely as possible so he could be near you. We’ve decided to support him. We’ll give you our phone numbers so you can call us anytime. Your childhood won’t last forever, and we know how turbulent the Foot’s social politics can be. Case in point: your exit from the Tower.” He cleared his throat. “So. Let’s talk about getting you back to your mother.”

“But I haven’t gotten to think about it yet!”

“It’s best for you,” he said. “You know it. I know it.”

“I want to talk to Dad about it first,” I said.

His eyes flashed. “And he knows it.”

“And Raph? And Mike?” I asked. “Where are they, anyway?”

“Busy,” Don said. “Watching the Tower.”

“Why? I’m with _you_ now.”

Don’s brows rose. “Because Watanabe Tower has been taken by a small group dedicated to the Japanese faction. If I dropped you off there, it would be a death sentence. At this point, it’s just a matter of finding out where your mother is.” He opened the microwave and pulled out the TV dinner, then stuck it in my hands. “Eat up and rest. You’ll have plenty of time to think.”

My heart sped up as I held the hot TV dinner gingerly between my hands.

“What if they… what if they killed her?” I asked. “Could I go with you then?”

He paused. “Yes.”

And for the first time in months, I hoped she would die. Oh, god, I hoped she would die, my own mother. This time, I felt a rush of guilt.

“And… Takeru,” I said. “What about Takeru?”

“Watanabe? Your brother? He’s safe, to my knowledge. Takeru left the hospital secretly with members of the American faction sometime last evening. We don’t know where he is at this point, although I suspect he’s somewhere in the city. He’s definitely target number two, though. Which leads to the following complication.” Don shoved a spoon into my open hand. “The police have come sniffing thanks to that stunt the Japanese faction pulled at the Tower. This is slowing everyone down on both sides. It’s real cloak and dagger shit now. Did Leo ever tell you about the Eastside Massacre?”

I set the dish down on the floor. “That’s where Shredder’s Elites fought Mom’s, right?”

“Right. There were dozens of fatalities… not only of Foot _genin,_ but of policemen and civilians. The fighting took place in broad daylight. The police knew they could blame the Foot but couldn’t really pin down the _why_ or a singular _who_ was ultimately responsible. It has remained a huge loss to them, both in prestige and in numbers. Now they’re afraid another Massacre is on its way, and I am not sure I disagree.”

I knotted my hands up in my pajama skirt. “That would be bad.”

“Very. Your mother is a lot less flashy these days, but she’s not afraid to bring out the big guns when the occasion’s called for. And this time she’s in full control. She can easily become their, ah. Singular _who_.”

“Do you know anything about my squad?” I asked.

“They weren’t caught by the cops, if that’s what you’re wondering. I know that one of them went to the emergency room and was kept for observation, but she left late last evening sometime. Where they are now, I don’t know.”

My shoulders relaxed. “Good.”

“Don’t relax yet. We have seen some mention of you in the Japanese faction’s communiques, but they don't seem to know if you're real or not. Most of them seem to believe that you may be a red herring—with one notable exception. Two old personal guards of your grandfather's, apparently. It looks like your mother only winged them in the first round of assassinations and they’re pissed. They seem to think you're a higher-quality target and have some _genin_ and lower-ranked Elites willing to follow them.”

Prickles ran down my spine.

“Oh no,” I whispered.

“Exactly,” Don said. “And what’s worse, I think they guessed it was Leo who picked you up. They weren’t able to follow us, but I think we should stay low and keep our noses clean.” He pointed at the dish sitting on the floor. “Eat up. Believe me when I say that you will need your strength.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I tackled the lukewarm pasta. I ate slowly while Don watched me. He was thinking deeply; I could see it in his face. His gaze was focused somewhere past me into another world. He unsettled me. I could tell that he was moving all his friends and enemies around a mental chessboard. I didn’t like it. I wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him. I wanted him to go back to calculating the exact ratios of buttermilk to flour for the perfect waffles.

Which was when I realized with a pang that he couldn’t go back to Northampton, either. And it was all my fault.

“I’m sorry I made you leave Northampton,” I said quietly.

“Huh?” he asked. He flickered back to the room, back to me.

“I’m sorry I made you leave…”

“Why?”

His voice was harsh. I couldn’t help tearing up again. I gulped the last slimy portion and hesitated over the plastic bowl. I could see a dark reflection of my face in the sauce. Then I stood up and, before either of us knew what to expect, stepped over to Don and threw an arm around his neck. He seized up. It was like leaning against a statue. His arm fell around my shoulder, but there was no embrace, only a burden. Then he pushed me away, scowling.

“Where do I put this?” I said lamely, offering the plastic dish. “There’s no trash can.”

He plucked it out of my fingers. “I’ll take care of it. Go to bed. Get some rest.”

“Where’s the restroom?” I asked.

“First door on the right when you leave,” he said.

I nodded, but I didn’t look at him. Chin against my chest, I pattered into the hallway. I couldn’t exactly stay in the restroom for very long; I wasn’t sure when Don would realize I’d palmed the phone off of him, and it would be a definite dead end, with a door he could easily unhinge.

I popped into the restroom, closing the door loudly enough to be heard. The toilet was a dazzling white. The rest of the room was dingy and poorly lit. I could smell the stink of bleach here, too, but the crumbling brick and high walls alluded to those of a prison. I closed and locked the door and then stretched my cupped hand out in front of me. The phone lay there, sleek and gleaming. Thirty-seven missed calls. Maybe if I waited, she’d call again, and I wouldn’t have to worry about unlocking it. How quickly could I talk to her? How much would Don be able to hear through the wall?

I lowered the toilet seat slowly so that it wouldn’t clank and sat down on the lid. The phone lay inert. The longer I sat there, the more terrified I was that Don would knock. Finally, after no more than three or four minutes, I slipped it back up into my oversized sleeve, flushed, turned on the sink for about fifteen seconds, and then ran out of the door.

I rushed into the bedroom where Dad rested, lunged up into his lap, and threw my arms around his neck. He startled, snorting, jerking back as though stung. For a moment his eyes flashed at me, cold and unseeing, and I gazed upon the face that looked upon his enemies. Then the light of recognition flickered and a great smile crinkled his eyes up into little half-moons. He threw his arms around me. I squeaked in his grip. The recliner groaned dangerously beneath us.

“Saya,” he said. “I missed you so much.”

Before I could say anything more, the recliner snapped. The whole thing tilted backward and both of us slid back in startled silence, our legs kicking up at the ceiling. For a second we lay smushed against the ruins of the recliner’s back, chins digging into our throats. We glanced at each other. Then a weird smile crooked across Dad’s face.

“Saya, you’ve grown!” Dad said.

It was such a startling thing to hear out of him that I shouted.

“Oh my god!” I said, slapping him on the shoulder. “You’re so mean!”

He squeezed me tightly. “How are you feeling?”

“Great.” I closed my eyes and melted against him. He smelled like machinery and damp earth.

“How many shots did you give me?” I asked at last.

“One.” He stroked his hand over my scalp. It was smooth as an egg, a bit lumpy in places where it had healed funny.

“Wow. That’s all?”

“Yes. I could almost watch you heal in real time.” His voice was dreamy.

“Where are the other shots?” I asked.

“Don has them. For research.”

“We should get them back,” I said. “I don’t think we can trust him.”

A smile cracked across his face again, this one a bit sharper.

“Why not?” he asked.

“He wants me to go back to Mom,” I said, “and he was really mean about it.”

Dad was quiet. Something dark was moving behind his eyes, something I couldn’t follow.

“What did he say?” he asked.

So I told him. I told him about the phone call, staring him directly in the face as I did. His expression darkened. When I told him what Donatello had told me, his lips curled back into a sneer. It was an expression I’d never seen him make before. If I had to call it anything, I would have said it was a haughty disgust. The disgust I’d seen before. The haughtiness was new.

“For god’s sake,” he said softly. “He knows better, Saya. I will say it right now: what he did was not right. And we will talk about it when he gets here.”

I felt a burst of satisfaction. Suddenly it was just the two of us again, matching wits against the world. Everything was going to be okay. Just like that, I surrendered my future to him. I was ready to wander off into the wilderness. I was ready to sleep on the ground with the deer ticks and fend off curious raccoons and bear-proof our backpacks for the rest of my life.

I was just about to cuddle up against him again when he released me. He raised himself up on his elbow. Suddenly I realized that something was there that hadn’t been there before. Something more authoritative, self-possessed, a pride. Before, when it had just been us against the world, he’d been… colorless, for lack of a better word. Fragile, thinner, somehow. Now he was fully fleshed out. There was a solidity there, a spine, substantiality.

I realized suddenly that I was no longer the sole object of his focus.

Jealousy rushed up inside of me. I bit my tongue.

“What are you going to tell him?” I asked. I struggled to keep my tone even, but it sounded accusatory.

“That conversation about staying or leaving is a conversation for _us_. ‘Us’ as in ‘you and me,’ not ‘you and Don.’ Any conversation that includes him afterward should include the group as a whole. He’s not the only one who has something to lose.”

“So it’s okay if I stay with you?” I asked quickly. “I want to stay with you.”

He paused, held his breath. Then he closed his eyes.

“Dad?” I asked.

His eyes flashed open, pale and steeled with resolve. To my horror, I didn’t know what it meant. I’d always been able to read him without speaking. I felt like I was groping in the dark for meanings only he understood. Again the jealousy rose up in me. I had no doubt that my uncles could have read him without problem.

“Saya,” he said. “I believe it would be best if you went back to your mother.”


	20. Chapter 20

I lurched away from him, stiff-limbed. My body felt leaden, senseless. He did not move after me, but I saw his fingers twitch, then curl into tight fists. He watched me go.

“No,” I said. “No, Daddy, no, I don’t want to go, I don’t want to…”

“When you were three, you tripped on a curb,” he said. “You hit the sidewalk forehead first. You blacked out for a minute. I was terrified. Thankfully, we were in a city at the time, so I carried you toward the hospital, debating whether or not I should hitchhike or call for an ambulance. I was afraid of CPS, I was afraid of the police, I was afraid of your mother… I had just turned into the hospital’s parking lot when you decided you’d had enough of being carried. You asked to walk. You seemed fine. You could walk, you could see straight, you were no longer nauseous, and your energy had returned. You just had a bad goose egg and a headache, both of which disappeared within a day. I knew the way we healed, and I wanted to think that was what had saved you. But it made me think. What if you were hurt enough to need the hospital? What if you contracted some sickness you could not fight? What if you were hurt in a place where there was no hospital? How could I live with myself if you died because of my negligence?”

Something clicked. I didn’t remember falling down, but I vaguely remembered Dad carrying me. I remember being angry and screaming. I had thrown up and bitten him. We’d stayed on the outskirts of major cities for about two years after that. I’d never connected the dots before.

He rose to his feet, the ruined recliner snapping beneath him. I don’t think he ever blinked. I stood up, too. I noted offhand that I was nearly as tall as he was.

“I have watched you and your mother for a long time,” he said in a heavy voice. “Your mother never treated you unfairly, much less cruelly. She made sure you were clothed, fed, educated, and trained.”

I started shaking my head “no” over and over and I couldn’t stop. My tongue felt too big for my mouth. But he didn’t stop talking.

“She never altered your body against your will; she accepted you for what you are,” he said. “On top of all of this, you are part of a squad of ninja with spectacular skills. You like them. They like you. There’s a place for you in the human world. Up there, you’re human. You have a future rich with possibilities. You could go to college, take whatever career you liked, have boyfriends…” He brightened a little. “Get married.”

“She’s a crime lord!” I said. “She sells weapons to third-world countries and drugs to poor people and…”

“You are not ‘third-world countries,’” he said. His voice was quiet. “You are not responsible for what she does. Not yet.”

“I don’t want to lead the Foot!”

“Then don’t,” he said. “But let her raise you until you are capable of stepping out into the world on your own.”

“No, no, you don’t get it,” I said. “She used my blood without telling me and she used your blood without telling you and she’s gonna sell…”

“You weren’t locked up in the Bunker,” he said.

“Because I was locked up in an apartment!” I said.

“You had a birthday party, a proper birthday party,” he said. “She gave you a wig, hair, medicine, books, tutors… you lacked for nothing. You’ve been growing as you should, your health has never been better… Your life has been improved tenfold. With me…” He threw his head back and breathed out. “With me you lived like a homeless street urchin.”

“Dad, listen to me! I was locked in an apartment. I was scared every day that we were going to die! Me and my brother were stabbed there and Fujita-san…”

The sob punched me through the diaphragm. I slapped my hand over my mouth and turned away. He put his arms around my shoulders and held me to his chest.

“Shh, shh,” he said softly. “I’m so sorry, Saya.”

For a minute we were both quiet. Tears streamed down my cheeks. Fujita-san! The loss of her struck me like a gut punch and knocked all the wind out of me. I struggled to regain my composure. Coming to terms with that cold, still form in the kitchen being the same lively little old lady fluttering around the apartment seemed impossible.

“Fujita-san was the only person who really loved me up there,” I said into his chest. “And now she’s gone.”

“She was an excellent person,” he said softly, stroking the round of my skull. “Many in the Foot never accepted me, even after I had proven myself over and over. She accepted me at once. I thanked heaven every day that she was there to look after you, especially in the beginning.”

“You knew her!” I said, looking up at him with hungry eyes.

“I did. She let me in and out of the secret egress in your mother’s room.”

“The secret… the secret what?”

“Oh, did I say too much?” he asked. His eyes sparkled.

“There’s a secret door in there?”

“Yes. With a little squashed elevator. It requires a code to run, of course.”

“So maybe I could sneak out to see you,” I said softly, leaning into his side.

“You shouldn’t do that. You know what it will do to your mother.”

“Oh my god,” I muttered, and slapped his plastron. “I don’t care.”

“You should. You will be staying with her from now on.”

I pushed myself away from him. “No, Dad. I told you. Someone’s always killing someone in the Foot. I mean, what if I get attacked again?”

“It took me twenty minutes to get to your location last afternoon,” he said. “And by that time you and your squad had managed to kill two adult Elites.”

“Because they underestimated us! Because we outnumbered them!” I said. “Not because we’re that good.”

He shrugged. “It is true that luck is part of every battle, but if you hadn’t been trained it wouldn’t have been enough to save you. All that matters is this: they’re dead. You’re not.” He straightened up and jutted his chin. “Hear this from me now, Saya, because it is true: I was wrong about your mother. I acted in selfishness, fear, and pride. I did not help you. I hurt you.”

“Mom hurt me, too!” I snapped. “So did Don! And Mike! And Raph! And Shadow! So what? Everybody hurts everybody all the time. I can deal with that. But I’m not happy with Mom, and I tried! And you know what? She’s not happy, either! If I grow up with her, then I’m going to turn into her, and I don’t want to. She’s always scared and sad and alone!”

“I know,” he said quietly. “Perhaps that was why I was interested in her to begin with. So like me. By fixing her, perhaps I could learn to fix myself.”

“You don’t need to be fixed,” I snapped. “You’re my favorite. I’m glad you’re my father. I want to go with you.”

The laugh that popped out of him was from somewhere deep in his chest, half gurgled and awkward. His eyes sparkled, his grin glittered. He squeezed my shoulders and knelt down before me.

“What would make you not feel sad?” he asked.

“Northampton,” I said. “I want to go there.”

His smile dulled.

“We can’t go there,” he said. “So what is another solution?”

“I want to live with you and everybody else,” I said.

“We can’t do that, either,” he said. “I did your mother wrong by keeping you to myself. She missed all your milestones and the delight of watching you grow up. Before she took you, I hadn’t understood the sheer empty dread of not knowing how you were, how you felt, where you were, how you were changing from day to day, wondering if you were being taken care of properly. That must have tormented your mother… she had gone through such a terrible loss not many years before. What I did to her was almost worse than killing you outright.”

“Then I want to come see you,” I said swiftly. “Regularly. Every weekend. Every day.”

“You will have to ask your mother for that. She has refused me every time I’ve asked, I’m afraid.” He smiled coolly. “Speaking of which… do you still have that phone you stole from me?”

“Yeah?”

“I need it back now,” he said. “I’m going to call your mother and ask her what she wants me to do. While I do that, I want you to think of some ways you can be happy without either the farm or me.”

He held out his hand.

I hesitated. I had pinned it up underneath my arm. I could have played dumb. Instead, I pulled it out and I set it in his hand. He flipped it face-up, frowned at the moist and oily smear my armpit had left on it, and wiped it clean with his sleeve. Then he began to type. He tapped at the password screen so long that I wondered for a second if he’d started texting.

He had just selected the phone app when Donatello rushed through the doorway, eyes blazing. I could feel rage rolling off of him. The minute he saw Dad on the phone, he skidded to a stop. I kept my eyes fixed on the back of Dad’s phone like it was the most interesting thing in the room.

“Ah,” Don said shortly.

“I can guess what you’re thinking,” Dad said, swiping through his calls. “And yes. It was wrong. I will talk to her about it. But you must also admit…” He lifted his eyes to Don’s. They were cold and emotionless. “…you didn’t exactly do well yourself.”

Donatello bristled and gritted his teeth.

Dad lowered his eyes to the phone again. “But for now we should worry about coordinating a meeting time with Karai or her agents.”

“All right. Fine,” Don said, and reached into his pocket. He drew out a different phone—his own phone, I realized. It had an Android’s faceplate, but the case was a single shining sheet of metal. He had duct-taped part of the bottom on at some point.

“Are you texting Mike?” I asked.

He glowered at me. “Raph.”

I clapped my mouth shut.

When Dad made the call, he had barely lifted it to his ear before I heard Mom spitting venom on the other end. Her voice was thick with weariness.

“You fucking bastard,” she said. “Have you called me to gloat? Then gloat while you still can. I tell you, the moment I catch so much as the shine of your eye…”

“Where do you want me to drop her off?” he asked.

Silence.

“What?” she asked.

“I asked, ‘Where do you want me to drop her off?’”

“The dojo,” she said. “At once.”

“As you wish,” he said.

Before he could punch the button to hang up, her voice burst out of the speaker, triumphant and terrible.

“She asked to come back, didn’t she?” she asked. “I knew she would.”

Dad lifted the phone to his ear again. His lips peeled back. He licked his teeth.

“Yes,” he said. “She did.”

She began to laugh. Such a high and cold and piercing sound. It was born from the same glee I had seen on her face in the photograph.

Horror welled up in my chest. I jumped against Dad’s side and began pummeling his arm. Tears prickled at the corners of my eyes. Just as I was about to shout at him, Dad slung his free arm around me and slapped his palm over my mouth. His face was pale, and in his face, I saw him silently begging me to be quiet.

“I told you,” she said. “What could you possibly give her, you hideous vagrant? An alley strewn with trash? Meals from a dumpster?”

“Exactly. You were right. I was wrong,” Dad said. “I’m sorry.”

“Hmmmmm!” I squealed into his palm.

It was too late. He hung up, frozen, phone held numbly out in front of him. He seemed so empty.

Don glanced up from his phone and for a moment the rapid tapping ceased. There was a crease across his brow.

“You okay?” Don asked.

“No,” Dad said quietly. “But it will get better.”

Dad finally released me and I struggled out of his grip.

“No!” I said, wiping my mouth off with the back of my hand. “You lied! I didn’t say that!”

He shrugged me off, shook the despair off like raindrops, and pocketed the phone.

“It’s better for everyone if she thinks so,” he said. “And don’t you dare say anything else. Suspicion eats her from the inside out.”

Don snorted from where he leaned against the wall, then rapped something onto his phone with more strength than he needed.

“Get the car ready, Don,” Dad said.

“Yes, _mein F_ _ührer,”_ Don said, saluting him with a heel click. Without looking at either of us, he swept away through the doorway, his over-sized sleeve slapping against the jamb.

“Why are you so awful?” I shouted after him.

Dad grabbed my arm.

“Why is he so angry?” I asked.

“He’s thinking,” Dad said. “Don’t worry about him.”

Tears popped up in my eyes again. “But I don’t want him to hate me!”

“He doesn’t hate you. Believe me.” Dad turned me around. “There are more important things for you to think about.”

“Like?”

“Like… how can you be happy without either the farm or me?”

“I can’t!” I said. “I’ve already thought about it for months. I want to go back to the farm!”

“And I want to be with your mother,” he snapped. “But it won’t happen. For our health, for your health, it can never be. When you are an adult, you may go where you wish, but for now…”

“But _you_ _’re_ an adult and you don’t go where _you_ want!” I said.

We both went pale and quiet at the same time. The words that came out next struggled through my throat.

“How can you be happy without her?” I asked. “Have you thought about being happy without her? Maybe I can turn around and let you stand here for five minutes to think about it.”

He burst out laughing, groping up at his face to staunch tears. “Saya!”

“Okay, I’ll give you six minutes!” I said.

Index and thumb stabbed up into his eyes, he laughed helplessly.

“But I want a real answer!” I said. “I want a bulleted list! And a mind-map!”

My voice came out all funny at the end and soon I was laughing and crying, too.

“You should know, Saya,” Dad said, after we had calmed down a little, “that this was a lesson of my father’s.”

“It was?”

“Yes. Understanding that everything is temporary. Animals, people, feelings, relationships, the works of our hands… even the very universe itself. When I was young, I thought that it was easy, letting everything go, imagining going without my brothers and my father and my blades and even my life. But I didn’t understand that there were pains I could carry that would never die, even though what I loved had died long before. It has taken me a decade to realize that the real struggle was becoming accustomed to death… not hanging on to what is dead.”

“But just because it’s dead in her doesn’t mean it’s dead in you,” I said. “You can’t kill a feeling.”

“No. Nor can you reason with it. I squash it down, I think it’s gone, and… I see a picture of her face. Or I see her in you. Or I hear a certain tone of voice on the radio, on a movie. And all the things I felt rush up again against my will. Memories of times I felt happiest, and futures that could have been. How much I loved to think of you, and me, and her, all in that apartment together. And yet, even in those imaginary futures… I couldn’t imagine the world outside the apartment. Because the world would never allow us to be together, just as the Foot would never allow her to be with me.” He took a deep breath. “These longings are still as strong as the day they were born.”

“Do you think it’ll ever stop?” I asked. “Even when we get old?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Why do some things die and some hang on? I will be the first to tell you that this love I feel for your mother is beyond foolish. It has destroyed our family. It made me give up my brothers, it made me give up on my beliefs… I gave away everything I treasured about my life.” He swallowed and closed his eyes. When he spoke again, it was in a whisper.

“I am afraid I will carry this pain forever, Saya, as I am afraid you may carry your pain forever.”

“Did Don ever tell you about Faerie?” I asked.

“Oh,” he said, and chuckled a little. “Yes. Stumbling in and out of happiness. A soothing thought, if a bittersweet one. We had a long conversation a couple of months back. He’s not kind when he’s trying to help you.”

“So he doesn’t hate me?”

“Oh no, no. I told you, he’s afraid. I think he’s afraid of feeling too much, too—it’s a way of protecting himself. He’s really very fond of you.”

“What? Really?”

“He always opened our meetings with what we called ‘Saya Status,’” said Dad. “Whether you were well, and how he guessed you were faring day by day.” He cleared his throat. “He had pictures of you that he accessed from security cameras.”

“Oh,” I said. Then, hesitantly: “Dad, can I tell you something?”

“Of course.”

I leaned in closely and whispered.

“Don scares me,” I said.

Dad grinned. “He scares me, too. Good thing he’s on our side.”

“What was it like, growing up with him? Was he always angry like this?”

“Angry? Sometimes, when he felt like he couldn’t put his thoughts into words. But not often. He was my best friend growing up. Mike was too energetic, Raphael too moody. He was closest to me in personality and maturity. We had lots of late-night conversations in his lab… he was like… a breath of fresh air sometimes. I always assumed I had hurt him the least, but…”

Dad opened his hands helplessly.

“I don’t want to make the same mistake,” I said sharply.

“Mistake? What mistake?”

“I have a brother, you know?” I said. “Takeru.”

“Yes. I never did get to meet him.”

“So you knew!”

“He was something of an open secret, but yes.”

“I want to be best friends with Takeru,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt him anymore. How do I do it?”

“Well. Don’t abandon him for a girlfriend and abuse his trust, I suppose.”

“I’m serious!”

“And so am I.”

A disembodied voice crackled out of the ceiling, and both of us jumped. Dad’s hand flew down to the _tantou_ on his hip.

“Car’s ready, kids,” Don said out of the speaker. “I hope you’re dressed.”

Dad whipped his gaze down to me. Our eyes widened at the same time. I was still wearing the oversized nightgown and nothing else.

“Uh… I can’t go like this,” I said.

“This way,” Dad said, pushing me ahead of him into the corridor. “We gathered some clothing for you in preparation. Let’s find something you can wear.”

“Wait,” I said.

“What?”

I wrapped my arms around his waist. I wanted to remember everything: the expressions on his face, the throb of his heart, the texture of his skin.

“We don’t have to be there in a big hurry or anything,” I said. “We can just say we got lost.”

He pulled me up in a hug and said nothing. I buried my face into his throat. We held each other for a long, long time.


	21. Chapter 21

Dressed in a second-hand t-shirt and sweatpants, with a hoodie that was two sizes too big and sneakers that were just right, I laced my fingers between Dad’s and we walked out. His palms were as hard and scratchy as horn, and our weapons beat on our hips. If I closed my eyes, I was little again, and we were on our way to nowhere, without any aim except staying together.

We turned down another series of utilitarian tunnels. From what I could tell, they were organized in a grid, leading into one identical square chamber after another. Most of them did not have doors. I started seeing drifts of filth—first little tongues of trash licking up against corners, then piles as high as my knees. The brown stain of an ancient waterline lifted higher and higher until it touched the ceiling, and we passed rooms choked so full of detritus that I couldn’t see the floor. Everything was coated in a clinging, musky scum I associated with oil and dirty humans. The floors and walls were yellow with it, and the ceiling was festooned with greasy cobwebs. The closer we grew to the sewers proper, the further the spaces between the lamps. We alternated through circles of light and shade.

“What is this place, really?” I asked Dad.

“We suspect it was storage for the building above,” Dad said. “But they closed it off and forgot about it, so we took it over for ourselves.”

“Why is it so gross?”

He laughed. “Anything open to the sewers long enough turns into a sewer itself.”

“Then why would the builders connect it to the sewer?”

“They didn’t. Not originally.”

“Who were ‘they’? What did they do?”

“I’m not sure. By the time we got here, the rooms were all empty except for trash. Don might know.”

Soon we stood in a single well of light before a steel door. Age had darkened it, and it was pocked with rusty bullet holes. Oiled hinges fresh from the hardware store shone in sharp slashes, like white stitching on dark fabric. The wall was a curious patchwork: the lower two feet of it was grimy and weathered, but on the left side were bricks of various sizes and colors outlined in bright, modern mortar. They had been fit into the wall like Tetris pieces, outlining an irregular shape that bloomed out shoulder-high.

“What’s this?” I asked, slapping the newer brickwork.

“Well, it _was_ a hole. This used to be open to the sewers,” Dad said. “Mike found it on one of his rambles. At the time, all we could see were some rat-sized holes and a few deep cracks in the mortar. If you leaned down, you could feel a fresh-smelling breeze through the holes. Pretty exciting.”

“So you beat your way through it?” I asked.

“Right. Up to this point we’d been taking turns sleeping in the car, so when Raph saw it, ah… well. He hates confined spaces… and he can be excitable.”

“He went through a _wall?_ _”_ I asked.

“Shoulder-checked it into submission,” Dad said with a wink, and threw the bolts. “Hold your breath.”

“For how long?” I asked.

I finished my question just as he threw the door open. Following the swing of the door was a cloud of fetor so strong that I could feel it on my skin. Gagging, I ducked away and covered my face.

“About fifteen minutes,” he said, patting me on the back of the neck. All I made was a groaning, hacking sound in reply.

When I had collected myself, he reached down for my hand again. We ducked into a dripping tunnel. The darkness here was solid, an unbroken blackness that stretched away on either side of us. For a moment I was frightened. There were only two lights: the yellow bulb hanging just outside the steel door, which Dad turned off almost immediately, and a lamp from the street above that cast glowing dashes through a grate.

I clung to Dad’s arm as he locked the door. I couldn’t shake the thought that there was something aware deep in that darkness. Unbidden, the rat in the yukata sprang to the forefront of my mind. I wrapped my arms around Dad’s and glared into the abyss. Stopped just behind my teeth was a shout for the specter to go away.

Dad set his hand on mine and squeezed. He said nothing, but he stared into my face without blinking.

“I’m okay,” I replied testily.

Dad patted my hand, then rustled around in his pocket. The next thing I knew, a light blazed to life in his hand. I jerked away, blinking stars out of my eyes.

“You’re jumpy today,” he said.

I ignored the question in his voice.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t worry. Nothing down here but rats and spiders. This way.”

When he turned toward the wall, I saw that the outside of the door to the hideout was covered in a thin brick veneer. Once fully closed, I couldn’t tell there had been a door there at all.

“Wow,” I said, blinking. “How do you ever find the door again?”

“I won’t lie. I’ve passed it a couple of times.” Dad flashed the light on either side of us. I saw nothing but weathered walls and crumbling brick.

“Did Donatello make it?”

“Yes. Well, he planned it. Mike was the one who did the actual art,” Dad said. “Hold still.”

“What?” I asked. “Why?”

He shrugged off his jacket and threw it over my head. A droplet plunked on his naked shoulder and streaked down to the broken edge of his plastron. It left a dark maroon mark.

“Because it’s filthy down here,” he said, chucking me under the chin. “You’re already going to smell detestable when we get out, but there’s no need to make it worse than it already is. Now keep close. There are sidewalks here, but they’re not very wide. Follow me and don’t leave the path. The mud is deep enough to swallow a horse.”

“Are you sure it’s just mud?” I asked. “It doesn’t smell like mud.”

“I’m just trying to stay optimistic,” he said.

Suddenly I wanted to cry. I grabbed him around the waist.

“I don’t want to go back,” I said into his side.

He threw an arm around me and squeezed me tightly, but said nothing. We stood in the thick darkness and stared at nothing.

Eventually he let me go, patting me too hard on the shoulder, and without a word he strode ahead of me. I followed. It was an easy walk, just a foul one. Our path followed a crude cement sidewalk that hugged the wall. The tunnels varied in width and height, sometimes arching above us until they were lost in shade, and sometimes so low that we had to bend over to pass through. Here and there the walkway had been so violently weathered by running water that it had cracked apart, baring rusty rebar.

Our path had been cleared, but not completely. We squeezed past hillocks of trash and crunched over mounds of broken brick. Cobwebs and garbage dangled from the ceilings. The channels were full of plastic bags, twinkling foil wrappers, smashed and discolored paper cups, little rivulets glistening like rainbows. The stench ebbed and flowed, carried to us on faint currents. I detected puffs of exhaust from unknown sources, or cool fresh breezes from outside, or the mutter of machinery I could not name. Most of the time I only heard cars or the rattle of pipes. Far away, I heard the rustle and thud of rats. They frightened me the most. I squeezed up behind Dad and grabbed his hand.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Did Donatello really frighten you that much?”

“No, it’s not that!” I said. “It’s the… it’s the rats.”

He laughed. “Rats! You’ve faced worse. Are you sure that’s it?”

My mouth opened and shut.

 _Don_ _’t say it,_ I told myself. _Don_ _’t say it._

“Yes?” he asked. His eyes were twinkling in a way I’d never seen before. I felt like I was looking back in time at someone younger.

“I saw your dad,” I blurted.

He stopped suddenly. His hand squeezed mine reflexively. The young man behind his smile disappeared in a flash.

“Please don’t joke about that, Saya,” he said.

“I’m not,” I said softly. “He’s been following me for days, and he’s been in my dreams. I feel like he’s out there right now.”

Dad turned to face me, arms held rigidly by his sides, his hand like a weight in mine. His expression was lost in shadow.

“I’ve been dreaming about him, too,” he said. “So have… the others.”

“What does it mean?” I asked.

Dad looked away, down the long, burning beam of the flashlight.

“I don’t know,” he said. “If I were younger, I would have told you he was visiting us. I would have loved the thought of it. But I don’t trust him now.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because he might be an _onryou_ _,_ a ghost that comes back for vengeance,” he said shortly. “Did he speak to you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you understand what he said?”

“Once.” I took a deep breath. “He said you were going to die.”

Dad threw his head back and blew a long gusty sigh out of his nose.

“I don’t want you to die,” I whispered.

“Everyone dies,” he said, staring at the ceiling.

“Did you kill him?” I asked.

He winced. His fingers released mine.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me _everything._ I just mean that…”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I killed him.”

“On… on purpose?”

Dad didn’t say anything for a while. He cracked one knuckle after another. The rats rustled together and then were quiet.

“He always loved Donatello so much,” he said at last. “They were very similar as people. Both very inward. Treasured their silence and their alone time. Spiritual in… a way I was not.”

“Really? Don?” I blinked hard. “I thought he was an atheist.”

“He says he is now. But he’s still superstitious in ways that make me wonder.” Dad waved idly. “In any case, I was jealous for Father’s attention. Whatever Don did to curry his favor, I tried to copy. So when Don first began to speak, I was the second to follow. When Don took junk apart to see how it fit together, I was just behind him, deconstructing… destroying whatever I touched. I didn’t have Donatello’s vision, you see. I didn’t know he was trying to understand what made things work. Father saw that brilliance in Donatello early and encouraged it. But he saw in me…” Dad paused. “No intelligence. Just dumb emulation. Looking back, I don’t think he realized I was trying to impress him. I think he thought I was a brainless copycat.”

“You mean he thought you were _stupid?_ _”_ I asked. “But it sounds like you were just a baby. That’s not fair. What about Mike and Raph?”

“Both of them were hurt, too, of course. I was just too small to recognize it. They express pain in different ways.” Dad shrugged. “Mike turned to us for love. Raph turned to anger. And I… I organized. It was something of a nervous tic in the beginning. I wanted to make sure everybody was nearby. I wanted to make sure everyone had enough to eat and drink. In those early days, heat was important, so… I also made sure we found places to sun. When Raph or Don started one of their fights, I was the one who made the peace. I started forming a kind of home around us.”

“What was your dad doing?” I asked, aghast. “You mean he was just ignoring you?”

“You must keep something in mind, Saya,” Dad said. “We had no relation to each other in the beginning. The only element we shared was an accident. There was no reason for him to come back to us. I think the only reason he began checking up on us to begin with was because he was following a regular route by our nook and was intrigued by our transformation.” He coughed. “We were stuck, you see. In a channel like this one. We couldn’t crawl out.”

“You mean you could have _starved_ to death, and he didn’t even care?”

“Rats are fond of other rats. Turtles, not so much. You must understand: this was a relationship that developed in shifts. Donatello’s development was fastest and most profound, so it was Donatello who drew him in. Then he began feeding us every three or four days and making sure we had water. It was enough because we were still so close to turtles, and turtles have much slower metabolisms. But he _was_ gone a great deal in the beginning. Later he told me that he was sleeping in his master’s apartment.”

At the time, I didn’t understand the heavy meaning behind this. The idea of a giant rat, sopping with sewer water, climbing up through a broken window into a murdered man’s apartment? It was a hideous thought. He chanced discovery, he chanced capture, he chanced almost certain death. These days I can imagine him creeping like a wounded thing between the upturned furniture, turning over a bit of broken lamp to sniff at a spot of blood, shuffling into the bathroom, baking in the sweltering New York summer just to be close to the battered fragments that still smelled like the most beloved living thing in his life. How astonishing to see this interminable chain of agony stretching back and back and back. It lanced through Dad’s soul and through his father’s soul and through the master’s soul. Now that I’m older, I can recognize its workmanship in me, too.

“And then what happened?” I asked.

“He moved us to a safer part of the tunnels. I’m not sure what happened to him here.” Dad paused, blinking slowly. “He started walking on his hind legs. He started talking like a human being. But he didn’t speak the same language as the people aboveground. Sometimes it seemed like he was switching between voices—deeper voices, slower voices. He would have conversations in his sleep. I walked in on him conversing with the corner.” He paused. “He told me once, when he was drunk, that he could hear his master in his head. Sometimes I wonder if the master had possessed his body, or if… if it were a different kind of master.”

“Like Nezugami?”

Dad shook his head. “Nezugami. I never believed in him. Yes, I thought he was a fascinating old story, and when I was very young I liked to think that we were Nezugami’s pupils. But sometimes now I wonder what Father was. How did he know Japanese? How could he know his master’s art so well simply from watching him?” He turned to me, eyes wide and terrible. “Did I kill a god?”

I shuddered. Although it was still summer, I felt cold.

“It doesn’t matter, I suppose,” Dad said. He leaned against the wall. “When Father began walking on two legs, I copied him. Here was something Donatello did last. And when he began practicing katas, I copied him. And this time… this time it was my first honest act as a person: something I wanted to do for myself, for my own sake. It was something I really got, really felt.” He stretched out his arms, folded his fingers into fists. The muscles tautened and bulged against his skin, lifting a multitude of shining scars into broad relief.

“So he trained you then,” I said.

“Yes,” Dad said softly, dropping his arms. “He had the first inklings of his plot to kill Oroku Saki. He realized he could use us. So he began to teach us all the art. But as far as earning his favor? It made no difference for me, or Mike, or Raph. Donatello—Donatello could come to lessons late, or perform a task poorly, and would get away with it. I would stay late, I would take on extra tasks, I would take care of our home, and what did he do?” Dad’s lips tightened. “He made a tool of me. He had no affection for me, the same way you would not treasure a broom or a plunger or a fork. He told me where to go and what to do. And for a long time that was what I thought love was. Pleasing, obeying. Servitude. Slavery.”

I reached up and grabbed his hand, gave it a squeeze. He didn’t seem to notice. His gaze was fixed on the inky darkness stretching away in untold directions.

“But love isn’t slavery,” he said. “Love is…” He looked down at me, gaze softening. “It’s respect. It’s respecting another’s individuality and differences instead of trying to force them into a mold. It’s wanting the best for someone, what’s _honestly_ best for them, and having the imagination and empathy to know when that ‘best’ is different from your own. It’s letting people go when they need to go and be what they need to be, even if their future never touches yours again. The problem was that as Father grew older, he didn’t want to let me go. I started seeing a world outside where I could be anything, an entire universe where I could do whatever I wanted, and he was angry about that. He was old, he was weak, he was afraid, and he leaned on my duty in the same way he leaned on Donatello’s love. One day, we began arguing, and I just…”

He shuddered and looked away.

“Did you really mean to, though?” I asked.

“You could call it a crime of passion.” Dad shrugged. “But at no point was I out of control. I could have stopped myself. I did not.”

“But Mike said…”

“Mike doesn’t want it to be true. He always worshipped the ground I walked on.” Dad’s lips twisted. “I can’t tell you how it felt to let him down. How it felt to let… myself down.”

“I’m glad you killed him,” I whispered.

“Don’t say that,” Dad snapped, and grabbed at my arm. “Let’s go. I shouldn’t have told you this. I wanted us to have good memories of this last walk.”

“Dad!” I said. “Slow down. I don’t care!”

“You should care!” Dad said. “What I did was wrong. It’s enough to damn a man, regardless of what he does with the rest of his life. I’ve even been waiting for you to repeat the cycle, and I thought: I wouldn’t hold it against you. If you had to kill me, then I wouldn’t come back as _onryou._ I would accept it. I would guard you from the other world until you joined me there. Remember that always, Saya. I love you more than my own life.”

“But I don’t want to kill you!” I said. “Is this why you’re taking me back to Mom? You think you’re setting this cycle up again, so I’m going to stab you and take your sin away or something? Because I won’t! I’d never do that!”

“It doesn’t matter if you do or don’t,” Dad said, “as long as you make your own choices. As long as you’re free and your own person.”

“Dad, stop trying to hurt yourself!” I cried. “And don’t use me to do it!”

He stopped, and turned to me, startled. His eyes were huge in the dim light.

“My god,” he said.

“Don’t you understand that you’re better than Mom?” I said, leaning into him. “You’re a good person, Dad! You’re good! Bad people don’t worry about _being_ good, they worry about _looking_ good. And you try to do the right thing all the time. If you _didn_ _’t_ worry about being good, or work at it at all, you wouldn’t be. But you are!”

He opened his mouth as though to retort, but then closed it again. He drew me close and breathed in, breathed out.

I felt, rather than saw, the release of his burden.

**

When I had been brought down to the sewers the first time, I had had the sensation of length. Long walks, long corridors. But I realized that either we had taken a different route or my sense of time had been altered. It only took fifteen minutes for us to find the ladder leading up to the surface. What a ladder—leaning, with missing rungs, cobwebbed, eaten away by moisture until it was as jagged and red as the teeth of a shark. I swallowed.

“Can you believe we fixed this?” Dad asked as he donned padded gloves. I could see the carefully stitched areas in the fabric where extra fingers had been removed.

“Fixed?” I asked. “This was _worse_ once?”

“Absolutely. We found it on the ground. You can still see the outline. See?”

With that, he shone the light down on the sidewalk. He wasn’t lying. A rust-red silhouette in the shape of a ladder had been stained into the cement.

“Are you sure this is going to be okay?” I asked.

He gave it a firm shake. It didn’t quiver much, but a few particles of rust plinked onto our shoulders.

“Yes. We can’t leave obvious signs that we’ve been here, you know.” He extended his arm. “I’ll carry you.”

“I can climb fine,” I snapped.

“I know you can,” he said. “But I don’t have an extra pair of gloves, and I don’t want you to cut yourself.”

I don’t know what came over me. I realized that when the burden had left Dad, a kind of weight had left me, too. I don’t know what it was. I think that if I had still borne it, I would have argued with him and taken off up the ladder by myself. Instead, I jumped up into the crook of his arm and relaxed into his side. He lifted me like I was weightless. I don’t think I’d ever appreciated how strong he was before. Like I told you, I was nearly as tall as he was and very heavy, and he never struggled with my weight.

We emerged into the warehouse, and soon crept out onto the street, unlocking and locking padlocks as we passed. The morning clouds were scraps of blue paper against a lavender backdrop, and far away, we heard the baleful rumble of traffic. The white car waited for us in an overgrown alley, motor purring. We slid into the back seat together.

“Sorry for the wait, Don,” Dad said. “We had some important things to talk about on the way up.”

“Yeah, I’m just burning gasoline,” Don said. “And you know how we are just flush with cash.”

Only then did I realize how tightly Don’s shoulders had tensed up, and when he turned to look at us, his eyes were narrowed. I felt terribly uneasy. All of his anger and tension, especially that directed at Dad, had terrible new meaning. My guts clenched up. It wasn’t irrational to think that Don had the walkway bugged, right? If Don loved Splinter, and if there were any question in his mind that Dad had killed Splinter on purpose, and if that murder had been admitted out loud…

“Are you okay, Uncle Don?” I asked, leaning over the dashboard.

Don grunted and put the car in gear. “As soon as we get this over with,” he said, “I’ll feel better.”

Dad set his hand on my shoulder.

“Put your seatbelt on, Saya,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One element of TMNT Volume 1 that escaped me until a re-read some years back: there was a note by Peter Laird stating that Donatello and Splinter had a particularly close bond. I was flabbergasted. What the what now? I had always seen Donatello and Splinter as divided—Donatello obsessed with the new, Splinter a harbinger of the old.
> 
> With this bombshell in hand, I went back to the beginning of the series and started reading again. This was at the period that I had filled in the gaps of my TMNT collection enough that I could read an uninterrupted stream of comics from #1 to #62. I read "Twilight of the Ring," Vol. 1 #37, for the first time. There’s a point in “Twilight of the Ring” that Donatello dresses up in a cringey shaman get-up and howls word diarrhea, then sends an unbelieving Leonardo to find some spiritual bogeyman because New Age shit. I had to blink and re-read dialogue several times, because suddenly it was clear to me:
> 
> Don was the religious fanatic.
> 
> Leonardo was the logical pragmatist. 
> 
> Upon further re-reading, I realized that in both Volumes 1 and Archie TMNT—both runs created simultaneously in Mirage Studios—Donatello is the only one to consistently see gods and spirits over and over and fucking over. Leonardo explicitly states that he’s no believer in the supernatural. 
> 
> I am fascinated by this transformation because this means that our perception of Leonardo’s spirituality is a product of a fandom misunderstanding, and that misunderstanding was eventually absorbed by the powers that be. I wonder now if Leonardo’s spiritual genesis originates from the 1990 movie. (I would be remiss not to mention the “Zen” hibernation shit they pull to survive an airless chamber early in Vol. 1—but all of the TMNT can do it and it’s not presented as a spiritual skill as much as a utilitarian one, so I have omitted it from consideration here.)
> 
> This blew my fucking mind. I had been reading Volume 1 and Archie with a bias that had been proven incorrect to my face over and over, and somehow I had never seen it. I had been imposing a story on the comics that simply didn’t exist. Which meant that there was a different story there that I had been willfully misunderstanding. (Or maybe I misunderstood it because of Mirage’s bland-ass characterization. Honestly. Probably that.)
> 
> I realized that this brought a lot of Leonardo’s traits into question. His love of ninjitsu is usually interpreted as a way he bonds with Splinter, his father figure. It is also assumed that he will take Splinter’s place when he dies, and as such, that he has accepted all of his beliefs, religious ones included.
> 
> Clearly fucking not. All of these were assumptions I had blindly accepted. I was clearly wrong about one element, and as none of the other elements had been proven at any great length, I felt free to reinterpret as I saw fit. And if there’s anything I love, it’s reinterpreting shit that doesn’t need to be reinterpreted.
> 
> I was still reeling over these thoughts when I re-read Vol. 1, #48 (”Shades of Grey, Part One”). In this issue, Leonardo tries to take the guys on a training run. Donatello doesn’t want to go. Splinter allows him to stay home and fuck around with a computer. Leonardo gently argues with Splinter and is rebuked. He’s told that they can make their own choices now.
> 
> Now, it’s impossible to read emotion in anything that Jim Lawson draws—everyone is an identical series of cubes with either straight lines or scalene triangles for mouths, which are as emotive as you might imagine—but suddenly I saw Leo’s hundred-yard stare at Splinter as one across a divide.
> 
> When I reached Volume 2, #1, I interpreted another page completely differently as well. In this one, one of the Turtles stands in a blood-spattered room, fists clenched. At his feet slumps the body of Master Splinter. It’s impossible to tell which Turtle it is. Early on, I’d always assumed it was Donatello, given that he was recuperating with Splinter at the farmhouse in Northampton and had recently been given some cult literature. Clearly, he murders Splinter because he becomes unstable and culty, blah blah blah.
> 
> Unless it isn’t Donatello. Unless it’s never been Donatello. Because, again, I was fucking assuming. It could be any of the Turtles. Any of them could go see Splinter at any time, and he could go to see them at any time. Suddenly I was making up murder mysteries and that page was delicious as FUCK to me.
> 
> Now, Volume 2 was a clusterfuck. That delicious page is never, ever answered and never will be. But the long and the short of it is that I connected all of these disparate dots and wondered what kind of person Leonardo actually was. He’s presented as two-dimensional as notebook paper, but although this stripped him of any meaningful depth, it also meant that he became a canvas to write upon.
> 
> And thus Saya was born and I wrote this pretentious end note lol carry on


End file.
